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LD Concord 

H^^ HlGHWT^YS 

AHD Byways 



MARCAReT SIDNEY 



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OLD CONCORD 



HER HIGHWAYS AND BYV/AYS 



Revised and Enlarged Edition 



BY 

MARGARET SIDNEY 

Aiitlior nf riie Pettiboiie Name, Five Little Pe|)pers, 
Tile finlden West, Hester, and others. 



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' ri.LVSTRATF.n BY 
MISS MARY UyfEF.LF.R, A. //'. //OSJ/ER OF CONCORD, 
L. J. liRIDGMAN and //. P. BARNES. 



BOSTON 

D. LOTHROP COMPANY 

WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD 



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Copyright 1888, 

BY 

D. LoTHRop Company. 

Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

D. LoTHROP Company. 



Press of 
C. A. PiNKHAM & Co. 

289 Congress St. 
Boston. 



$n illcmoriam 



TO MY HUSBAND 

WHO LOVED OLD CONCORD 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

AND MY LIFE ANEW 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The site of the battle, showing the new iDiidge, the monument erected 

in 1S36, and the Minute Man Front/s. 

The old l>arrett house ...-■••■• 

One corner of the " Muster Room" looldng into kitchen . 

Site of the old house, where the British soldiers drank from the well, 
and " Tory Bliss " was seen 

Fac-simile of an old engraving of the centre of the town, showing 
the British soldiers destroying the stores in the " Ebby Hub- 
bard " house, by throwing them into the mill-pond 

The " Ebby Hubbard house" with " Ebby " at the gate 

Fac-simile of an old engraving showing the fight at the old North 
Bridge. The " I'rovincials " are on the further side 

The Virginia Road . 

Thoreau's birth])lace 

The tablet on the bluff 

Meriam's corner 

Ephraim W. Ikdl, the originator of the C 

The old oven in the Meriam house 

The Wayside .... 

Hawthorne's study in the tower at " 

The Larch path on Wayside ground 

Hawthorne's seat 

W^ayside Dining-room 

Orchard House .... 

Emerson's home 



111 cord grape 



The Wayside " 



List of Illustrations. 



The Thoreau corner .... 

The old Minott house .... 

Shattuck's store and tlie pulilic storehouse 

In the Concord Libiary .... 

The Library, showing Main Street and Sudbur 

Mr. French's studio where the Minute Man wa 

A corner of Mr. French's studio, showing his s 

Thoreau's cove at Walden Pond 

Visitors' memorial on the site of Thoreau's hut 

On the Concord River 

Fairhaven Bay . 

On the Assabeth 

The Hemlocks . 

The tablet at Egg Rock . 

The Elislia Jones house 

Avenue to the Old Manse 

Hawthorne's grave in Sleepy Hollow 

Emerson's grave ..... 

The tablet on Keyes' Hill 

Site of Harvard College temporarily located a 

The Hosmer house ..... 

The old Winthrop house .... 

The Lover's Path in Fairvland . 

The sylvan shore ..... 

Fairyland Pond ...... 

Fee's Hill 

On the road to " Nine Acre Corner " 

Martial Miles' house ..... 

" The very room where he started his perpetua 

Irishman Quin's house .... 

Jennv I3ugan ]>rook .... 

" Here is the hill where her jjeople lived 

" Old Marlborousrh Road " 



y Road 
; modeled 
atue of Endvm 



Concord 



niolit)n ! 



76 

11 
80 

83 

85 
89 

91 
97 
99 

105 
109 

ii.l 

114 
115 
118 
119 

123 

126 
127 
131 
^Zl 
'39 
'43 
'47 
•51 
157 
161 

'63 
'65 
169 

^IZ 
176 



OIgI ConeoPc?] 







OLD CONCORD 

HER HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 



L 

A SPRING day with free range through Old 
Concord ; then, if ever, comes that peace of body 
and mind that seldom blesses mortals. It may be 
that the legendary aroma of the amicable settle- 
ment between our enterprising fathers and the 
original owners, has permeated the old town. 
Certain it is that over tlie homesteads and fields 
broods a deep and abiding content. When all 
things shall come up for a final adjustment in the 
last great Day of days, it seems that Concord might 
be gently passed by, and allowed amid general 
dissolution, to hold herself together untouched. 

Other places suggest the hand of the innovator, 
and the in-letting of a little vitalized blood; Con- 
cord never. Towns, villages and cities grow up 
and flourish around her borders, awakening no 

9 



lO Old Concord. 

envy, not even surprise. She knows it all, being 
keenly alive to what is going on in Church or 
State. With a not unpleasing indifference to 
material progress, she adjusts her opinions on 
every subject, considers this adjustment final, and 
rests by her river, gentle, sluggish and persistent 
as herself. 

To accommodate the restless ones within her, it 

is said the neighboring city of B was founded. 

Hither go at early dawn, to seek a more stirring 
life among men, such as find their craving strong 
upon them, but they return at night, with a glad 
gleam in the eye, breathe " Concord " gratefully, 
and are satisfied. 

The best way to see Old Concord is to take a 
low phaeton and an easy-going horse ; with a 
superb indifference to time, to start without the 
worry of choosing your road. In any direction 
you will find rich fields. Arrange that the expedi- 
tion be made in a day with a smart turn-out, and 
you will return at night, your mind filled with a 
surprising array of tablets, inscriptions, a Minute 
Man, a battlefield, a glimpse it may be of the river, 
a curiosity shop, an alarming number of grave- 
yards, a sculptor's studio, homes of famous writers, 



Her Higlnvays and Byiuays. 13 

as badly mixed up as the children in " Pinafore;" 
and you call all this Concord, and wonder that 
people make such a fuss over it, and why you took 
the trouble to come over to see it, and wish you 
had struck off something from the list your well- 
meaning friend in town had given you of things 
you must not fail to see, so that you might have 
reserved time " to do " Lexington also. 

No; the carriage must be easy to ride in, and 
easy to get out of, for frequent studies; it must 
only hold two persons, you and your appreciative 
friend, who beside a little knowledge of the town 
must also possess the rare gift of occasional silence. 
The horse must not be ambitious to get on. He 
must be reasonable, and not take it ill if occasionally 
vou foro-et his existence and leave him tethered 
beyond the time, while you gather the secrets ot 
the town. It will take several days to "do" 
Concord in this manner; lazy driving about 
here and there, as your spirit wills, interviewing 
the old residents, who, in the seclusion of their 
ancient homesteads, are delightful indeed, and 
most valuable to you in your search for authentic 

records. 

There are no hazy " may-bes " about the town 



14 Old Concord. 

and its history ; no elaborate dressing up of tradi- 
tion. Everything is as open as the day for your 
inspection, and the briglit sunHght of truth shines 
through it all. You are left free to study, search, 
and explore to your heart's content. No one is 
surprised that you have come ; no one urges you 
to stay. Here, if in any spot on earth, each is mas- 
ter of his own movements, and lord of his time. 

The indulgent reader will kindly understand that 
these sketches will not attempt to re-write Concord's 
history, nor estimate anew her literary life. They 
will treat of some of the old town's unwritten spots, 
and much that might escape the general sight-seer. 
But any study of Concord, however slight and 
methodless, must contain much of the past cent- 
ury's life so closely intertwined with that now 
going on in these quiet streets, and recognize 
the subtle influence of the immortal three who 
wrote, lived and are sheltered here in death. 

No sound greets us other than the crooning and 
clucking of the fowls, picking their way across the 
road, one eye on the carriage and its occupants, 
and the occasional "caw " of the adventurous crow 
hungrily threatening the adjacent meadow. The 




ONE CORNER OF THE " MUS'lEK Room" I.ooKING INTO KITCHKN. 



Her Highways and Byways. 17 

old gnarled apple-trees cast picturesque shadows 
on the grass of the door yard, which is guiltless 
of fencing, and over the old homestead as guilt- 
less of paint. W'e draw rein ; quick footsteps arc 
heard in the little entry ; the door is thrown back, 
and our hospitable hostess smilingly bids us 
enter. 

" Do let us see the ' Muster Room,' * " we cry, 
"and tell us the story there," for this is the Colonel 
James Barrett house, and we have come for the 
record of the old homestead during the activities 
of the eventful nineteenth of April, 1775. 

With the directness of a child, and the quick 
utterance of one who knows her story well, and 
enjoys telling it, Miss A. ushers us in, and offers 
for our acceptance high-backed rockers, but we 
hasten to the delightful window-niches, and very 
soon we are no longer living in to-day, but a past 
century claims us. 

Colonel James Barrett, her great-grandfather 
(whose father lived before him in this old house), 
was born in 17 10. He went through the French 



*The " Muster Room " is tlie lower from room as seen in the accompanying view of the 
house. It has two front windows and one on the side. Tlie age of the house is not known 
it has always been in the possession of the Barrett family. 



1 8 Old Concord. 

War, to come out with impaired healtli. In the 
threatening times preceding the historic nineteenth, 
the important duty of buying the provincial stores 
was entrusted to him ; he kept a portion of them 
carefully under his personal supervision. He held 
also the responsibility of examining the soldiers 
and of enlisting them. This work was always 
done in the room in which we were sitting. 
Hence its name — the "Muster Room." (There 
is a curious hole, shaped like a three-leaved clover, 
over the door; Miss A. pauses in her description, 
to tell us that her father said it was cut there when 
the house was built — for what purpose, other than 
ventilation, the visitor cannot imagine.) 

When the British soldiers (a detachment under 
Captain Parsons being sent to the Barrett house 
for the stores, and to take Colonel James) were 
heard coming, the old mother of the Colonel was 
alone in the house. The family had urged her to 
flee to a place of safety, but the plucky old lady 
said, " No, I can't live very long anyway, and I 
rather stay and see that they don't burn down the 
house and barn." 

One of the descendants of the Colonel gives it 
as his opinion that probably two companies were 



Her Highiuays and Byiuays. 



19 



sent to the house — about one hundred and fifty 
men. (Shattuck's History states three companies.) 

Captain Parsons stepped up, " Madam, I have 
orders to search your house." 

" You won't destroy private property } " asked 
the old lady, not flinching. 




SITE OF THE OLD HOUSE, WHERE THE BRITISH SOLDIERS DRANK 
FROM THE WELL, AND "TORY BLISS " WAS SEEN. 

"No; we will not destroy private property, but 
we shall take anything and everything we find that 
can be made into ammunition, or any stores, and 
our orders are to take Colonel James Barrett." 

Early in the morning, when the first news of 



20 Old Concord. 

trouble to come, was heard, the men in the Barrett 
family ploughed up the land south of the old barn, 
in what is now the kitchen garden, a space of about 
thirty feet square, and while one led the oxen, the 
others followed and dropped into the furrow the 
muskets that were stored in the house — then went 
back and turned the earth over them, thus conceal- 
ing them. They carried the musket balls into the 
attic and threw them into an empty barrel ; near 
by was another barrel about three quarters full of 
feathers ; these they turned over the balls. When 
searching the house, a soldier, spying the barrel, 
thought he had a prize, and thrust his hand 
into the feathers, stirring them up. An officer 
exclaimed crossly, " You fool you ! What do you 
expect to find there ! " Jeers instead of com- 
mendation being the soldier's lot, he stopped short 
in his investigations, and our forefathers had cause 
to bless that laugh of the Briton. 

There was a little trunk holding some pewter 
plates, very near the barrel. A soldier seized one 
end of this, lifted it and cried out, " This is heavy," 
preparing to break it in. The Colonel's old mother 
said immediately, " This is private property ; it 
belongs to a maiden lady in the family" — so 



Her Highways and Byivays. 23 

according to the promise fortunately secured from 
the comniander, it remained undisturbed. 

On the first alarm, the Colonel's son Stephen 
(who, the family record in the old Bible tells us, 
was born in 1750) was sent to Price Place (the 
cross roads where four roads meet, now called 
Prison Station) to tell the minute men who were 
hurrying from Stow and Harvard, and the vicinity, 
not to go down the road by the Barrett House, 
but to take the great road into town to the North 
Bridge. How long he waited at his post, tradition 
saith not, Ijut when he came back he passed around 
the house and entered the kitchen door. A British 
officer met him as his foot crossed the threshold, 
laid his hand on the young man's shoulder, and 
said, " I have orders to take you in irons to 
England." 

His quick^vitted grandmother started up and 
cried: "No, this is my grandson. This is not 
Colonel James Barrett; you may take him if you 
can find him." 

The soldiers, hungry and defiant, asked the old 
lady for something to eat. She, with manner as 
kindly as if ministering to the necessities of friends, 
brought out pans of milk and set before them, ac- 



24 Old Co7icord. 

companied by sweet loaves of brown bread, saying, 
" We are commanded in the Bible to feed our ene- 
mies." After they had eaten the bread and milk, 
one soldier offered her money. She refused with 
dignity, saying, " It is the price of blood." He 
then threw it into her lap. 

The old barn that was then standing, was about 
forty feet distant from the house. The lane was 
the same as the present driveway, which is quite 
close to the homestead. The soldiers were going 
to burn the gun carriages there (the best ones had 
been saved by carrying them to Spruce gutter), but 
the old lady begged them not to do so, for she 
feared they would set fire to the barn. Her pluck 
had conquered their respect, and her kindness had 
made them gentle ; and they drew them to the 
side of the corn barn, a small building about ten 
feet square, nearer to the road, and close to the 
lane. Here they had their conflagration to suit 
themselves. 

The tradition is that one of the soldiers who 
searched the house came back and stayed several 
weeks with Colonel James, liis name is believed 
to be Trott. 

And now Miss A.'s voice held a tremor of tender 



Her Hijrhwavs and Bvivays. 



25 



sentiment as she related the story of the pretty 
dauo-hter of the house of Barrett. MiHcent was 
the n-randdauohter of Colonel James, the daughter 



)f h 



IS son 



lames who married and settled in the 




THE "EBBY HUBBARD HOUSE" WITH " EBBY " AT THE CATE. 

next house toward Price Place. Milly, being 
young and pretty, it must be acknowledged, had 
learned how to coquette, and, so the story goes, 
had captivated, while on a visit to relatives in 
Cambridge, the hearts of some British soldiers 



26 Old Concord. 

whom she met in the cotillion and minuet, the 
dances of the day, especially fascinating one of 
the officers. 

She used to tease him, woman-like, to tell her 
how they managed their military affairs, and how 
they made their cartridges. 

He, man-like, told her the manner in whicli they 
made cartridges, adding if they should find out in 
England that he had given her the secret, he would, 
on his return, lose his head. (But it seems he had 
already lost that ! ) 

After the eventful nineteenth of April, she came 
home to her father's house and, woman-like again, 
at once proceeded to put her knowledge into 
good results. She gathered all her mates about 
her, and told them the secret ; and busily the 
young fingers flew, forming after the directions 
given by her British swain, the cartridges that were 
to save her brave countrymen. The scissors that 
she used were in the Old South Meeting House, 
but have been given to the Concord Library by a 
cousin of the heroine. 

The shadows on the grass are lengthening fast; 
the fowls that have been so noisily busy, begin to 
trail back across the road, thinking of twilight and 



Her Hio^/iways and Bvways. 27 

rest, when we come into the present century once 
more, and realize that we must leave the charming 
old house. 

" But first you must hear the story of that knoll 
yonder," cries Miss A., pointing out the side win- 
dow. We can see nothing but some trees in the 
distance, and we say so. 

" It is the site of another stopping-place of the 
British soldiers," she said in her quick, earnest way, 
determined to leave nothnig untold that we might 
need to know, " At that time there was on the 
rise of i^round next to this homestead a house 
occupied by Samuel Barrett and family. He was 
the only gunsmith living in this vicinity, and made 
the flint-lock guns for the minute men. It is said 
that at early dawn of the nineteenth of April a 
man on horseback, supposed to be ' Tory Bliss,' 
stopped by this old house, and pointed significantly 
to Colonel James Barrett's house. 

" There was a well near the dwelling at the foot 
of the tree. Here the British soldiers stopped and 
took long refreshing draughts ; as they drank, a 
woman in the house held up one of the children to 
let him see the troops. 

" Tradition says," continued Miss A., " an old 



28 Old Concord. 

man in the family who was down in the village 
that morning, in the midst of the sudden tumult 
when those quiet farmers became determined fight- 
ers, expressed himself very plainly about the British ; 
instantly a rough soldier threatened to kill him — 
to be met with the reply, ' There is no need of 
your doing that, for the Lord will save you the 

trouble in a very short time, for I am too old to 

1 ■ 1 ' " 
live long. 

We seem to be hearing the fearless words of the 
old patriot as we drive by the quiet meadows, so 
eloquent of deeds. We have dropped helplessly 
into the past. Every inch of ground traversed 
brings us nearer to a mine of history and tradition 
— the town's centre. 

The sites of the mill-pond, the mill, the old 
block-house and town-house, are now covered by 
the business of the town. Trade has taken pos- 
session of historic ground. To this centre, where 
the throbbing secrets of those perilous times were 
whispered with bated breath, the farmer of to-day 
comes to talk over, at the post-office and the store, 
the affairs of the whole world, discussed in the last 
newspaper. 

The " Ebby Hubbard house," as it was called, 



Her HigJnuays and Bxways. 31 

was beyond the corner on Walden street. Here 
was a large quantity of grain and animunition 
stored on the nineteenth of April, which the 
British destroyed by throwing into the mill-pond. 
Malt was made on the Hubbard place; the old 
malt-house at the end of the house proper, being 
blown down in the September gale ; the house 
was pulled down in 1874. The old homestead 
from the first sheltered a patriotism beyond ques- 
tion ; for years after when Ebenezer, or " Ebby," 
the name he carried among the townspeople, inher- 
ited the old place, he saved every cent that was 
]30ssible from his hard earnings, to accomplish his 
cherished desire that a suitable memorial should 
mark the spot where the Provincials stood on the 
day of the fight, and that the old North Bridge 
should be replaced by a fitting structure. He died 
as he lived, alone ; the neighbors found him sitting 
in his chair one morning, but the old patriot had 
passed on. This was in 1S70. Cairying out the 
provisions of his will, the year 1875 saw the Minute 
Man "telling the story in granite and bronze " to 
an eager multitude who thronged the new North 
Bridge to honor the nation's birth]3lace. 

While one detachment of the B)ritish soldiers 



2,2 Old Concord. 

was thus destro3'ing the stores taken from the 
" Ebby Hubbard" house, a second was sent to 
Colonel James Barrett's house, a third was guard- 
ing the Old South Bridge (the site of the present 
Fitchburg R. R. bridge on Main street), and the 
fourth was at the North Bridge. 

The Mill-pond occupied the meadow between 
Heywood street (then " Potter's Lane " ) and the 
Mill-dam and Lexington and Walden streets; the 
site of the old mill being now covered by the gro- 
cery store. Traditions linger around the old mill. 
One is the following: — 

When the soldiers entered to search for stores, 
the miller put each hand on a barrel of meal, say- 
ing, " This is my property, and you have no orders 
to disturb private property," thereby saving by his 
self-possession much that was intrusted to his 
care. It appears, in reviewing the history of Old 
Concord, that all the people were quick-witted on 
that eventful nineteenth of April. All honor to 
the minute men, and brave embattled farmers, but 
we must also acknowledge that the ready tact and 
sturdy fearlessness of those who went not up to 
battle helped " to hold the town that day." 



II. 



Shut in by the Bedford thoroughfare and the 
turnpike running from Concord to Lexington, is a 
thread of a road. As it runs away from either of 
the highways which it connects, it seems to dehoht 
m nothing so mucli as executing a series of curves, 
wmding in and out among the fields, and around 
an occasional rocky ledge, with indifference to the 
order a well-behaved road w.nild be supposed to 
observe. It is a road run riot. And whoever 
drives down its alder and birch-bordered leno-th 
or knows its beauty enough to prefer a walk 
through it, feels at once as frolicsome and care- 
free as the wayfaring itself. 

It suggests the antics of a lamb, or the fresh 
joyousness of a child, with his hands full of daisies, 
in a sweet English lane. 

The ideal of quiet; up-s])ringing life healthful 
and luxuriant, yet abounds on all sides. There is 
plenty of enterprise in the farms stretching off on 



34 Old Concord, 

either hand; all things blossoming and giving 
fruit with evidence of being well cared for. 

Young trees assert themselves most pictur- 
esquely in that old gnarled orchard back of yon- 
der stone wall. The very bushes by the roadside, 
based by the clumps of ferns, grow greener, sweeter 
and more wholesome than in any other road of our 
acquaintance. How inexpressibly fresh the air! 

Long ago, so one is told by the " oldest inhabi- 
tant " (that convenient individual who shoulders all 
our slips in accuracy), a negro slave, freed and sent 
to Boston by his master, built a little cabin on the 
plains, as the open fields were then called. He 
was known to his townsfolk as " Old Virginia." 
At this time it was a mere footpath that ran by 
the door of the little cabin, and it soon became, in 
village parlance, the " Old Virginia Lane," which 
name it retained for many years after the town had 
widened it. 

It is at times so narrow, and it has acquired 
such a trick of doubling and twisting, that the 
traveler Qroin^: from the Bedford road is not sur- 
prised to come suddenly upon a small house with 
its adjacent barn that appears to block his progress, 
suggesting the unpleasant thought that he has 



Her Higlnuays and Byiuays. 



17 



mistaken his way, and is after all making straight 
into somebody's door-yard. A few steps, however, 
and the road opens again to his encouraged view 
around the house, into apparently endless windings. 
A tidy little homestead of the pattern so common 




THOREAU S lilRTHPLACE. 



in New England as to be describable by the hun- 
dred, meets us at the gentle slope; and presently 
we come upon two poplars gaunt and grim, seem- 
ing to say, " we guarded the homestead that 3^ou 
seek." 



^8 Old Concord. 

" We must believe them," we exclaim, and draw 
rein, to pay tribute of respect to their undoubted 
connection with Thoreau. We are delighted to 
find it all true; that the house in which Thoreau 
was born, was moved some time afterward from 
the shelter of the poplars, to its present position of 
treeless waste. 

A little more of doubling and winding, and we 
see the house, an ugly, square fiat-faced domicile, 
oiven up to a foreign element that swarms in and 
out its old door. But nothing can undo the fact 
that within its walls the nature-poet first saw the 
lio-ht of day. So we gaze reverently at the unpict- 
uresque shell of a habitation, and determine to see 
if possible its interior. 

A surly dog responds to our insinuating rap on 
the door, by running around the house, piercing 
the air with short, nervous barks, thus hastening 
the approach of the good woman of the family who 
cuffs him for his pains and turns a pleasant face 
to us. 

She willingly assents to our request to see the 
old house, and we step over the threshold, the dog, 
notwithstanding his rebuff, carefully at our heels, 
and we are soon within the front room at our left, 



Her Hig/izuays and Bynvays. 39 

wliich we half believe is the apartment where 
Thoreau was born. As authorities differ, however, 
we must see the other room that claims the honor, 
and we beg the privilege. The good w^oman hesi- 
tates, then bursts out, " 'Tain't decent to look at, 
we keep our oats and apples and odds and ends 
there. Tm a-going to fix it up and paper and paint 
it when my son gets tinie, but" — 

*' If we only may," we interrupt the stream. She 
smiles and relents, and presently we are over the 
stairs and within the room. Neither of the apart- 
ments is in the least interesting. The house is 
not old enough to be quaint, and nothing of its 
interior calls for a description. It is Thoreau's 
birthplace ; this is its only claim for attention. We 
pass out silently, and resume our journey. 

At every curve of the old road, we seem to drop 
some pestering care ; we are so shut off from the 
world's highway, that we have absolutely forgotten 
the gnat-like demands upon our lives. It is as if 
we were free once more with that security that we 
do not remember since childhood. And no one 
shall say us " nay " if we loiter blissfully where we 
wall. The next moment — and we turn sharply 
into the broad highway cleverly concealed by one 



40 



Old Conco7'd. 



of the usual curves. Life once more takes us up 
with a " Why liave you tarried so long ? " and we 
are on the turnpike leading to Lexington. 




THE TAKLEl ON THE BLUFF. 



Once on the broad thoroughfare and we are in 
the clutches of the spirit of unrest again. We can 
no more resist her, than deny admittance to the air 



that enters our lungs. 



Icr IIio/i7L'(ivs and Byzvays. 41 

"Only a bit further to the tablet on the bluff. 
What a pity to come so far and leave it unseen," 
says our companion wheedlingly — so we are gra- 
cious ; particularly as our inclination points that 
way also. 

Before we reach the bluff, we can see the guide 
board beyond, at the junction of two roads. It 
tells us that " both roads lead to Lexington." On 
the green sward underneath, lies stretched a lazy 
pilgrim, familiarly called " a tramp," who doubtless 
oppressed by the activity calling for a choice of 
roads, concludes to sleep over it. We can almost 
feel his sullen eyes upon us, querying the Fate that 
would give us a carriage and deny him one; but 
in the shadow of the tablet telling of our ancestors' 
courage, shall we be afraid ? As long as our tramp 
moves not, we will stay and get our record: — 

THIS BLUFF 

WAS USED AS A RALLYING POINT 

BY THE BRUriSH 

APRIL 19, 1775- 

AFIER A SHARP FIGHT 

THEY RETREATED TO FISKE HILL 

FROM WHICH THEY WERE DRIVEN 

IN GREAT CONFUSION. 



42 Old Concord. 

How difficult to believe that this same stony, 
dusty thoroughfare once echoed terror to the quiet 
dwellers whose homes lay in the path of the de- 
stroyer. Fancy how gay they were, those conquer- 
ing eight hundred soldiers fresh from the massacre 
at Lexington, and jubilant over the easy victory 
before them. But the retreat — was there ever 
such another! Sore, defeated, confused, they hurry 
from the concealed fires of every bush, till they are 
routed on this bluff, to scatter in a panic-stricken 
rush for their lives. 

The blood in us stirs this mild spring day as we 
go over the story learned so long ago in the well- 
thumbed books of our childhood. Not even a 
gentle bird giving some deprecatory advice to her 
mate as to the location of their first housekeeping 
venture, nor the soft spring air playing through 
the thicket crowning the slope, can soothe us into 
our usual habit of mind. 

We wonder if it is the best thing, after all, to 
record our victories on the face of Nature, chang- 
ing the peaceful hum of the cricket and the sono- 
rous call of the rustic to his lazy oxen, into the 
clash of the bayonet and the rattle of musketry, 
and making it delightful to feel blood-thirsty. 



Her Hio;hways and Byivays. 43 

We remark as much to our companion wlu.se 
eye gleams, as we feel that our own is gleaming. 
She sits straight in our ancient vehicle, and says it 




meriam's corner. 



all with stiffened vertebivx, without uttering a word, 
" We cannot quench History. 

But our tramp is stirring, and we may be 
quenched, so we turn ingloriously, and rattle back 
over the stony '' pike." 



44 Old Concord. 

Aftei a clay in Old Concord, no one is justified 
in surprise at coming upon a tablet. And no 
matter how many times one reads the inscription 
on one of these constantly recurring granite blocks, 
there is always an involuntary pause (unless hurry- 
ing to catch a train) in their vicinity. It is some- 
times a trifie uncomfortable to be so historically 
surrounded. At present we arc in quest of all 
such landmarks. So leaving the tablet on the 
bluff and resuming our course toward Concord 
Centre, we welcome another at the junction of the 
Lexington and Bedford roads : 

MERIAM'S CORNER 

THK BRITISH TROOPS 

RETREATING FROAI THE 

OLD NORTH BRIDGE 

WERE HERE ATTACKED IN FLANK. 

BY THE MEN OF CONCORD 

AND NEIGHBORING TOWNS 

AND DRIVEN UNDER A HOT FIRE 

TO CHARLESTOWN. 

Set back from the road, its side close upon the 
Bedford thoroughfare, is a square, dingy yellow 
house with a lean-to and venerable doors. It is 



Her Hio;Jiways and Byways. 47 

picturesque from the road, its door-yard guarded 
by two flourishing trees of a later date; and from 
this point appears well-built and able to easily stand 
the strain of another century. But turning into the 
Bedford road, the house suddenly belies its brave 
front, and seems to be on the verge of decrepitude. 
A second glance, however, shows us that it is only 
a series of out-buildings clinging to each other till 
the word to drop comes, when they will probably 
all go loyally as one. 

Here we catch a glimpse of a round, good-nat- 
ured face at the window, and we approach the 
house, and beg for the local traditions. The 
matron, we find, is pleased to tell us, and the good 
man of the house corroborates it all, the informa- 
tion beine drawn from the descendants of the old 
family, the original ow^iers of the house. Con- 
densed it reads like this : When the good wife of 
the Meriam household heard the drums of the 
approaching foe, she ran and barricaded the front 
door with chairs, but the soldiers, hungry and cross, 
pushed it open and found their way to the kitchen, 
where, sniffing the hot johnny cake in the brick 
oven, they drew it out in a trice, while two of 
their number he.rricd to the barn to milk the cows. 



48 



Old Concord. 



Meanwhile " the girls " of the family, rushed across 
the road (which then ran over the present corn-field) 
and hid in the clump of quince bushes growing- 
near the site of the barn put up by the present pro- 
prietor, while other members of the household dug 




THE OLD OVEN IN THE MERIAM HOUSE. 



up from the ash-pit in the cellar the store of silver 
money (thirty dollars) there concealed and carried 
it to a place of safety. 

The milkers at the barn were presently alarmed 
by the sound of the approaching Billerica minute 
men, and they retreated in haste, without the com- 



Her Highiuays and Byways. 51 

fortable breakfast they anticipated. As they strag- 
gled off precipitately " Slow Meriam," as he was 
called, one of the sons (" never was known to be 
first in anything," in the words of our narrator), 
took down his old gun and deliberately aimed at 
an officer. " He has more stripes on than any of 
the others," he said, evidently intending to make a 
brilliant amende for his slowness. The British sol- 
diers hurrying off over the Lexington pike turned 
and gave the old house many random shots. One 
bullet pierced the east door. The hole has been 
filled up, but the mark made by the bullet is easily 
seen by the visitor. The old brick oven that 
baked the Meriam's bread a century ago, is still 
baking a family loaf on certain occasions, and the 
quaint closets over the shelf whose doors open in 
the centre, and the "corner closet," shelter as they 
did then, household articles of various kinds. It 
is like manv another old Concord dwellino-, just as 
fit to live in now, as it was in the old days, and 
holding twice as much comfort as any of our 
"Queen Annes," or nondescript "villas." 

We are sorry to go, but the originator of the 
Concord grape, Ephraim \V. Bull, lias expressed 
himself willing to receive us, and we repair to his 



5 2 Old Concord. 

dwelling, which, to use a localism, " is just a piece 
up the road." " He is in his greenhouse, of course," 
says my companion, who knew of him by hearsay. 
" Oh ! I hope among his grapes," we cry. And 
we are right. There stands the old man, kindly, and 
keen-eyed, of middle height, and tough, sinewy build. 
He has the face of a scholar, a shrewd man of the 
world, and a lover of Nature. He is self-possessed 
as a ruler over a large domain, yet Fate has de- 
creed him a small pittance of this world's goods. 
He is royally happy, and not a cloud dims his out- 
look on men and things, whom he watches with an 
observant eye, prepared as few are to keep abreast 
with the times. With a simplicity that is charm- 
ing, the old man receives us, and going on with his 
work of gently pruning his beloved vines, he gives 
us quiet deference, and listens patiently to every 
word. We speak of the Concord grape, and find 
that ill health proved to him a blessing, for it drove 
him fifty years ago to this home and occupation, 
and made it possible for him to slowly evolve the 
precious fruit from the wild cumberer of the ground. 
The story is familiar to all — would that every 
one mio-ht hear it from the old man's lips. We 
are dad to remember as we listen, that public 



Her Highways and Byways. 55 

acknowledgment has been made of the value of 
the Concord grape, and, at the same time, due 
honor was given to its originator. It is pleasant to 
think of one instance, at least, where appreciation 
is paid to the living, and Fame has a chance to be 
enjoyed by the one who has earned her favor. 

The queer little house with its lean-to that looks 
as if it were built to encourage the greenhouse, is 
really somewhat commodious, as a family of ten 
children was brought up within its walls. That 
the sons and daughters tarried no longer in the 
home than early youth, must be supposed, in order 
to believe the story. 

W^e have, by dropping in among the Concord 
grape-vines this pleasant morning, happened upon 
rich findings, indeed. We are delighted to learn 
that so much of the vicinity of the old garden where 
we stand is teeming with traditions for us. Concord 
being the shire town, and the stages running up 
and down over this old road, quite a local business 
in the memory of our friend, naturally sprang up 
here. One must always remember that in the orig- 
inal settlement of the town, the first houses were 
built between the mill-dam and Meriam's Corner, 
on the north side of the road, up against the sand- 



56 Old Concord. 

hill, which afforded protection from the winds and 
storms of winter, and allowed them to be more easily 
constructed. If only this old road, as it was then, 
could be reproduced for us ! But the most slender 
accounts of the original appearance of the settle- 
ment, are all that remain for us. We can reach 
back quite far, however, to credible tales. The 
memory of our friend, of traditions told to him, 
supplies much that is interesting. 

Old Montifuero, an Italian, lived on the espla- 
nade midway between Meriam's Corner and Mr. 
Bull's house. He made confections and a certain 
kind of cakes, quite as popular as the " Election 
cake " of training-day renown. Mr. Bull relates 
that on a sad recital in Montifuero's ears, of the ill 
health of good Dr. Ripley, he looked at first sym- 
pathetic, then brightened up. " If he die, what a 
lot of cakes I will sell," anticipating the big crowd 
drawn to the town. 

One French, who served in the Revolution, lived 
at one time in Mr. Bull's house. He was a black- 
smith, and his shop was in the corner of the grounds 
next to The Wayside which it adjoins. He lived 
there till two years before Mr. Bull came, which 
was in 1837. 




THE LARCH PA I'H ON WAYSIDE GROUNDS. 



Her HioJncays and Byways. 59 

In the corner of Love Lane, which strikes off 
from the Lexington road opposite The Wayside, 
stood a large Headquarters for the stage depart- 
ment ; the letters were distributed by the stages and 
taken up from the deputy post-office for this quarter, 
which was kept in the little square house, forming 
the main part of The Wayside, whose time of build- 
ing antedates all traditions. In this little house 
lived one Samuel Hoar, a man who came from 
Lincoln, a wheelwright by profession. The story 
p-oes that he lived and died in the belief that when 
he died, his spirit would pass into a white horse. 
(He was evidently trying to eclipse the former occu- 
pant of the dwelling whom Hawthorne has made 
immortal by recounting his fixed belief that he had 
found the secret of perpetual life.) His shop stood 
in the angle of the old stone wall adjoining the 
grounds of our friend IMr. Bull. Long years after, 
it was cut in two, one half being attached to either 
end of The Wayside. 

Afterward a Col. Cogswell, of Grafton, who was 
born in Mr. Hull's house and whose father was an 
officer in the Revolutionary War, bought The Way- 
side. He moved West, and subsequently sold the 
place to Mr. Alcott. 



6o Old Concord. 

Here lived the " Little Women " — Jo, Meg, 
Beth and Amy — and made the little old house 
a cheery home indeed ! Here Joe scribbled, and 
Amy wrestled with her fine words; here was Beth's 
little cottage piano, and here Meg mothered them 
all when dear Mrs, March was away. In 1852 
Nathaniel Hawthorne bought the place, naming 
it "Wayside," the Alcott family removing to 
Boston. 

We recall the prefatory letter to a friend accom- 
panying the " Snow Image " in which Hawthorne 
wrote, " Was there ever such a weary delay in 
obtaining the slightest recognition from the public 
as in my case? I sat down by the wayside of life, 
like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery 
sprang up around me and the bushes grew to be 
saplings, and the saplings became trees, until no 
exit appeared possible through the entangling 
depths of my obscurity," His son-in-law, George 
P. Lathrop, quoting this in a published article, 
adds, " Although the name ' The Wayside,' applies 
to the physical situation, Hawthorne probably also 
connected with it a fanciful symbolism, I think it 
pleased him to conceive of himself, even after he 
became famous, as sitting by the wayside and 




HAWTHORNE'S SEAT. 



Her HigJnvays and Byways. 63 

observing the show of human life while it flowed 
by him." 

The last romance written by Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, was " Septimius Felton," the scene of which 
is laid at " Wayside." 

The great Lexington road has little changed 
since the days when the wonderful romancer de- 
scribed it in the opening pages of this last book of 
his. There is the same " ridgy hill," along whose 
foot-line the early settlers planted their humble 
dwellings, substantially built for the most part, as 
those houses must be that are to shelter one's chil- 
dren's children ; yet primitive enough with ample 
opportunity left to those who come after, to extend 
or to alter as prosperity and civilization may de- 
mand. This turnpike — "pike " in the vernacular 
of the oldest inhabitant — connected the centre of 
Concord, the county town, or "shire," with Lexing- 
ton, its near neighbor, afterward to be drawn into a 
closer relationship by reason of the bloody baptism 
of April 19, 1775. 

Rose Garfield lived in a small house, says Haw- 
thorne, " the site of which is still indicated by the 
cavity of a cellar,* in which I this very past sum- 

* This is tlie depvessinn at tliu cud of tliL- Larcli iKitli on W.iysidu grounds. 



64 Old Concord. 

nier planted some sunflowers to thrust their great 
disks out from the hollow, and allure the bee and 
the humming-bird." Robert Hagburn lived, so the 
romancer tells us, in a house "a hundred yards or 
so nearer to the village." This was the Orchard 
House; the hill, making a little detour, as it were, 
from the road, the dwelling being set in this curve, 
and thus drawn back from the wayfaring. 

Septimius Felton dwelt in a " two-story house," 
Hawthorne tells us, "gabled before, but with only 
two rooms on a floor, crowded upon by the hill be- 
hind." (The Wayside.) "A house of thick walls, 
as if the projector had that sturdy feeling of per- 
manence in life which incites people to make 
strong their earthly habitations." Perhaps this 
" j^rojector," by some occult law of heredity, handed 
down through the years his belief in the perma- 
nence of life, as a bequeathment to Septimius. It 
was, he tells us, " an ordinary dwelling of a well-to-do 
New England farmer, such as his race had been for 
two or three generations past, although there were 
traditions of ancestors who had led lives of thought 
and study, and possessed all the erudition that the 
universities of England could bestow." 

The Larch path Hawthorne laid out at the top 



Her Higlnvays and Byways. 67 

of tlic gentle slope that rises from the wayfaring; 
following that winding curve made by the road as 
it breaks away from the straighter line and the 
turnpike. Along its outer edge, the romancer and 
his wife planted the slips of trees brought from Old 
England, scarcely able to realize, even in a vision, 
the wealth of foliage, and the graceful, tremulous 
pendants that now, on a summer day, conceal the 
path from the curious gaze of the passer-by. In- 
deed could Hawthorne see now his old home, what 
surprise would overtake him! No bare hillside 
with a scanty growth of infant trees and shrubs to 
mark its summit while bending in discouraged 
fashion to the stormy north wind, but a brave, 
luxuriant forest, crowning with lavish beneficence 
every undulation, till at last on the upper height 
it raises triumphant arms to the sky above. 

Drawn back from the Larch path, and within a 
stone's throw of the old apple-tree on the lawn that 
furnished a wealth of bloom (his favorite flower) for 
his friends to strew over him on that May day when 
the great romancer was laid to rest, is the Haw- 
thorne path, on whose crest one comes suddenly 
upon the supposed site that Hawthorne imaged as 
the burial-place of the young British officer. 



68 Old Concord. 

The dying youth, his brilliant uniform stained 
with the life-blood that was quickly ebbing away 
his young life, we remember, begged Septimius to 
bury him here, where he fell ; voicing his longing 
for quiet rest in the "little old church at Whitnash, 
with, its low gray tower, and the old yew-tree in 
front, hollow with age." But as that could not be, 
he begs again, " Bury me here, on this very spot. 
A soldier lies best where he falls." And so 
Septimius obeys. 

Still further on over the ridgy crest one follows 
the ribbon-like Indian trail, as " Hawthorne's path" 
winds along its narrow way. George Parsons 
Lathrop speaks of it: " It is as if Nature refused 
to obliterate the trace of his footsteps," and follow- 
ing it, one comes at last to the shadow of the " Big- 
Pine " and the " Hawthorne Seat" at a little remove 
in a grove of younger trees. 

P"rom the top of this hill, a good view in Haw- 
thorne's day, could be enjoyed, of the neighboring- 
country side. Now the trees are so tall and thick, 
and the intervening shrubbery so intrusive, that 
the outlying landscape is shut out. 

Hawthorne always expressed a great fondness 
for the scene that lay before him as he daily paced 



Her Highiuays and Byways. 71 

back and forth across this hilltop. " There is," 
he says, "a peculiar, quiet charm in these broad 
meadows and gentle eminences. They are better 
than mountains. ... A few summer weeks 
among mountains ; a lifetime among green meadows 
and placid slopes, with outlines forever new, because 
continually fading out of the memory; such would 
be my sober choice." 

The Orchard House, Mr. Alcott's home after he 
sold The Wayside to Mr. Hawthorne, is separated 
from it by a rustic fence whose present state is 
more a shadow of the past than a reality. Here 
the father gardened, held conversations, wrote his 
poems, and originated the School of Philosophy. 
The daughter opened the golden way to Fame and 
Fortune by the realistic drama of " Little Women," 
that was immediately set up on the stage of every 
quiet home-centre. 

The old house now holds, in the presence of 
Dr. W^ T. Harris, a deliQ-htful influence stroncr and 
far-reachin"- toward the solution of the educational 
problems of the day. 

" The Chapel " hanging to the side of the hill 
with philosophic calmness, annually re-filled the 
scholars who gathered there with the year's supply 



72 



Old Concord. 



of analytic wisdom. Many and deep were the re- 
grets when the Coiicord School of Philosophy 
closed its doors. 

We pause beneath the knot of pines by the road- 
side oruardino- the home of Emerson, and this from 
" The Poet " springs involuntarily to our com- 
panion's lips : — 

" The gods talk in the breath of the woods, 

They talk in the shaken pine, 
And fill the long reach of the old seashore 

With dialogue divine ; 

" And the poet who overhears 

Some randoni word they say, 
Is the fated man of men 

Whom the ages must obey." 

And we return for answer, " Never did the ' fated 
man of men whom the ages must obey,' utter a 
truer note than this : — 



"' lie of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly 

Serve that low whisper thou hast served ; for know 

God hatl"! a select family of sons 

Now scattered wide through earth, and each alone 

Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one 

By constant service to that inward law. 

Is weaving the divine proportions 

Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength, 

The riches of a spotless memory, 

The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got 

By searching of a clear and loving eye 

That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts, 



Her Highways and Byzuays. 75 



And Time, who keeps God's word, Ijiings on the day 
To seal the marriage of those minds with thine, 
Thine everlasting lovers. Ve shall be 
The salt of all the elements, world of the world.'" 



Half-way up the opposite gentle slope and drawn 
well back from the road, is the old " Minott House." 
This dwelling was on the corner of The Wayside 
p-rounds a century or more aoo. Moved to its 
present position some eighty years since, and al- 
tered to the dwelling now known to the town-folk, 
it is a place that wooes artists most seductively; 
possessing the right pose on the hill-side, the proper 
drapery of elm-boughs around its v»'eather-stained 
walls, and exactly the proportion of gentle dilapi- 
dation, to make a pleasing picture. 

The little street (Heywood) fronting the fine old 
family mansion two centuries old of the same 
name, is identical with " Potter's Lane." 

Continuing toward the mill-dam on the right 
hand side of Lexington Street, we find an inter- 
esting group of houses, one needing special men- 
tion, the " old Brown House ; " built by Reuben 
Brown, a harness-maker whose shop was next 
toward the centre, and in whose house cartridges 
were made a century an;o. A few curious bits of 



76 



Old Concord. 



this interior give a hint of the old-time quaintness 
of the house to those who care for the study of 
such things. Passing down the cellar stairs, one 
sees a small square door in the wall, opening into 
a room by the side of the chimney ten feet high 




THE THOREAU CORNER. 



and about six feet broad, where the bacon was 
smoked, the fire being made with corncobs. 

At the foot of the cellar stairs, a bit to the right, 
there is the same swinging oaken shelf supported 
by heavy iron chains that held the Tlianksgiving 
pies and " Election cake " so many generations 



Her Highways and Byways. 79 

ago. Underneath it are the two beams of oak, 
where the cider barrels reposed. The " Hving 
room" with its big fireplace is the family room of 
a century and a quarter ago. The old house was 
inherited by the son. Deacon Brown ; and thirty- 
two years ago it passed into the hands of the family 
who recently sold it to the Antiquarian Society. 
Mrs. C. tells us that Mr. Emerson used at one time 
the upper front east room with its open fireplace, as 
a study. Here he wrote many lectures and essays. 

The old house is now occupied by Mr. C. E. 
Davis, who has moved thither, by invitation of the 
Antiquarian Society, a large, oddly-assorted, most 
interesting collection of colonial furniture, curi- 
osities and relics, hitherto kept in several rooms 
in the Court House. 

Here is the " Thoreau Corner," where are grouped 
the beds, the desk, the chair and table used by the 
Nature-lover in his hut at Walden and his other 
homes. On the desk lie the paper-folder and the 
quill pen picked up where it lay after recording the 
last words of Thoreau. 

No one should visit old Concord without paying 
tribute to the Antiquarian House, whose quaint 
sign in all the glory of fresh paint, swings allur- 



8o 



Old Concord. 



inolv from a cross-beam between the two old trees 
fronting the dwelling. 

And now we come a bit further up the road to 
the Unitarian Church on our left, and next to it 
the famous old Wright Tavern once kept, one must 





¥11 »'f *'? * ?< 



■- •'•■'^ ^-■•^-'- •• 



shattuck's store and the public storehouse. 



remember, by Oliver Brown who was in the Boston 
Tea Party. Fronting the little park where stands 
the monument to the memory of the Concord men 
who fell in the Civil War, is a long old building. 

A century ago, the inhabitants of Concord saw 
over the door of the centre of this building the 
sign, D. Shattuck and Co., paints, oils and drugs; 



Her Higlnvays and Byzuays. 8i 

one long end being occupied by Mr. Shattuck as 
his residence; the other was used as a public 
storehouse. This last addition afterward became 
Thoreau s home for a time. 

" I do not dare to look at the clock on the 
church," says our companion. " Let us ignore it." 

But it is striking six, and we remember that no 
voice of the church should fall upon the unwilling 
ears of the pilgrims, even though sorely tempted 
by the rich )'ield of a "Concord day." We turn 
submissively toward home. 



III. 



Let us first visit the Library," so proposes our 
companion at the breakfast table. On the part of 
the humble chronicler of these clays in Old Con- 
cord, there is supreme delight, having, since our 
entrance into her river-girt borders, desired just 
this hour in her Library. The order is given for 
the easy-going beast who by this time quite under- 
stands our erratic movements, and takes no little 
pride in meeting all demands upon him with gentle 
resignation, to be made ready and waiting at the 
door. 

Many of our readers know well the history of 
this orreat e^ift to the town. Throuo^h the wise 
forethought of a public-spirited citizen, esteemed 
for that sterling virtue and keen intellect that 
marks New England character, it planted itself in 
the very heart of the daily life of the people, where, 
going or coming, to toil or to pleasure, they must 
see its presence and hear the voice from its elo- 

82 



Her Highways and Byways. 



83 



quent halls: "Come up hither; freely take, and 
learn how best to live." 

It is impossible for the youngest citizen of Con- 




IN THE CONCORD LIBRARY. 



cord to forget the existence of the Library. Beau- 
tifully placed, on the point running down between 
two prominent streets, with a little park in front, 
that the generosity of the donor has provided shall 
always be kept open, the lawn like a bit of English 



84 Old Concord. 

grass for greenery and luxuriant smoothness, it 
appeals to the eye, and woos the senses. It is 
most attractive of exterior. 

A mural tablet in the vestibule tells the visitor 
that — 

WILLIAM MUNROE 

Born in Concord, June 24, 1806 

Built this Library 

and gave it 

with funds for its maintenance and extension 

for the use of the inhabitants 

of his native town. 

On entering the Main Hall one naturally turns 
to the left into the Reading Room admirably 
adapted to its purpose, and well supplied with the 
current magazines and periodicals. 

Here are several historic reminders of Concord's 
Great Day; a curious sketch of Concord Jail hangs 
on the wall. An explanatory note under it says: 
" The jail in which General Sir Archibald Camp- 
bell and Wilson were confined when taken 

off Boston by a French Privateer. This sketch 
was made either by Campbell or his fellow pris- 
oner during their confinement in 1777." 




vw 





d 



Her Hig/iways and Byzvays. 87 

Here also hang the scissors used by Milicent 
Barrett in making cartridges during these memora- 
ble days ; and on the opposite wall is a quaint hand- 
bill evidently circulated with its fellows to stir up 
patriotism in the young American blood, entitled, 
under a row of black coffins, " Bloody Butchery by 
the British Troops, or, Runaway Fight of the Reg- 
ulars," and having some memorial verses appended 
to those " w^orthies who fell in the Concord Fight." 

There is a fine, half-length portrait in oil over 
the mantel of Ralph Waldo P^merson, whose serene 
spirit broods over this realm of thought, lending 
inspiration to the students and casual readers gath- 
ered around the tables and in little groups through 
the room. 

The view of the Main Hall given in the acconv 
panying illustration, shows the alcove devoted to 
the Concord Authors. In its centre is the bust 
of the donor of the Library; on either hand the 
busts of Hawthorne and Emerson. In the forc- 
oround, stands the statue of the Minute Man, one 
of Concord\s greatest works, and which she is 
never tired of honoring. Busts of Plato, Agassiz 
and Horace Mann, voiceless yet eloquent, are on 
the other sides of the Hall. 



88 Old Concoi'd. 

Here too the very children know there is a pres- 
ence other than the silent books, the voiceless 
statues, and the subtle influence of the place, to 
help them upward ; a wise, kindly presence that 
shall enter into the needs of each, and intuitively 
supply them. 

There is probably a larger number of books 
drawn from this Library than from that of any 
other town of its size in the United States. Even 
the infants appear to be omniverous readers, judg- 
ing by the returns of the librarian. To be born in 
Concord, presupposes a love of books, and the 
first inhalations of the air, it is said, introduce a 
yearning for the infinite; two or three years more, 
and the urchin in knickerbockers, or the little 
maid in a pinafore, trudges serenely down the small 
walk from the street, clambers over the steps, and 
demands with a tiny but wholly self-possessed 
voice, the chosen book at the librarian's desk ! 

" It stands like a beacon on some slender prom- 
ontory," observes our companion. 

" With the life of both roads surging up against 
it," we add as we come out and pause a moment 
in the little park to look up at the building. 

"Yes; and then each tide goes its way with its 



Her Highii.'ays and Byzvays. 



89 



human interests purified and strengthened because 
of this watch-tower. 'After life's fitful fever ' the 
man who thought enough of his fellows to erect it, 
must sleep well, their benisons in his ears." 

Down shadowy Sudbury Street we pass quietly, 




MR. FRENCH'S STUDIO, WHERE THE MINUTE MAN WAS MODELED. 



cross the railroad track, between sweet-scented, 
smiling meadows, follow the curve for a short dis- 
tance till we reach a low gray cottage with lat- 
tice window and broad porch, half concealed under 
spreading apple boughs. Off to the right stretch 
fertile fields; in front is the ancestral home. Here 



90 Old Concord. 

the young artist wisely built his studio in tlie midst 
of influences best calculated to make the divine 
art within him grow to its highest achievement. 
Here his fellow townsmen recoo'nized the messaore 
that the young worker had for them, and proudly 
they intrusted to him their greatest commission. 
Here was the Minute Man breathed into the clay, 
till the rough block spoke and told the story of our 
fathers' struggle for a home and a country. 

Continuing on the road toward Walden Pond 
we are presently entangled in a thick growth of 
shrubbery, through which the faintest trace of a 
path is visible. Here the aboriginal settlers must 
have dwelt in comparative safety from their white 
brethren's envious eyes, so shut in is it, so thor- 
oughly secluded from all haunts of men. After 
assuring ourselves over and over in needlessly loud 
tones that we are not afraid, we plunge in, bestow 
a gentle reminder on the unresisting horse, and 
give ourselves up to our determination to find the 
site of Thoreau's hut, the Cove, and as much else 
as is possible, of Lake Walden. 

A whirrincr in the bushes starts our resolution, 
and makes it pale a bit, but as we cannot turn 
back because of the narrowness of the path, we 



Her Highways and Byways. 93 

make a show of courao-e and dri\'c on with tioht- 
ened rein, 

" A woodchuck," suggests our companion, com- 
fortingly. 

We never knew what it was that disturl^ed our 
peace; and presently after much tearing of the 
carriage wheels through the undergrowth, and a 
corresponding amount of head-ducking to avoid 
the drooping untrimmed branches that insist in 
recklessly striking our faces, we come suddenly 
upon, not what we fondly hoped to see, but the 
railroad track ! 

We look into each other's faces in despair. 

" W ould you attempt it t " asks one ; which one, 
shall remain in oblivion. 

'' There is no place to turn off; we must retrace 
our way if we give up," says the other. 

" We have come to see Lake Walden, and the 
site of Thoreau's hut, and 'give up' as you put it, 
hasn't a nice sound." 

By this time we are over the track, and a smoth- 
ered " toot " somewhere down the shining rails 
sends us at a brisk pace tearing a trail for our- 
selves through the forest. 

Walden Pond, lying in a deep wood between 



g^ Old Concord. 

Lincoln and Concord, about a mile and a half 
south of the latter town, is nearly a half-mile long, 
und one and three quarter miles in circumference. 
It is beautifully located, from all points asserting 
itself most picturesquely. Even from the railroad, 
seen from the swift-speeding car, every glance 
reveals a vision of beauty, and a flash of a blue 
lake embowered in an emerald thicket of pine and 
oak haunts one all the rest of that day. 

But a nearer and more prolonged view, such as 
one eets over a boat's side in the centre of the 
pond, convinces one that an emerald tint also 
belonss to the water as well as to the trees; not 
so much, as some would tell us, from the reflection 
of the foliage in the bosom of the pond, as to the 
peculiarity of the water coloring itself. 

One part of the shore rises quite abruptly from 
the water edge to some fifty feet, while on the 
opposite side the height is still greater, though less 
abrupt of ascent. 

Walden has not the grandeur of a lake in the 
midst of mountainous scenery — that the few may 
visit and picture to their less fortunate fellows; 
it is a thought of God for the many, set on a 
thoroughfare, for the poor and needy, for the little 



Her Highways and Byways. 95 

children, for whoever will, to come and be refreshed 
by its beauty. It is a sweet dream of Life s possi- 
bilities in the midst of dull leaden actualities; and 
that God did give it so freely, and keep it unspoiled 
from man's improving fingers, is a cause for the 
deepest gratitude in any one who looks down into 
its blue depths. 

Naturally a tradition hovers over its silent bor- 
ders. Before the white men came, the Indians in 
holding a powwow upon a neighboring hill, as high 
as the depth of the pond, employed much profanity 
to express themselves. In the midst of it, the hill 
quaked and wavered, and suddenly collapsed. 
Only one ancient squaw named Walden escaped 
the general ruin. 

The stones of which tlie hill was composed, 
rolled down to become the shores of the pond 
that now opened to let the Indians and their 
naughty tongues down to a bottomless pit. 

As the Indians were rarely known to be profane, 
or indeed to sive their tono-ues much license, this 
ancient tradition lacks credibility in one particular 
at least. 

People there are who aver that the lake is bot- 
tomless. Thoreau, its best student and its ardent 



96 



Old Concord. 



lover, says, " The water is so transparent that the 
bottom can easily be discerned at a depth of 
twenty-five or thirty feet." He also says, — 

" The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly 
or not, and within what period, nobody knows, 
though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is 
commonly higher in the winter and lower in the 
summer, though not corresponding to the general 
wet and dryness." 

There is no discoverable inlet or outlet to Wal- 
den but, using again the words of Thoreau, " rain 
and snow and evaporation." 

A beautiful curve, as seen from the Lake, in 
shape like a crescent, its wooded slope gentle of 
ascent, shielding him who would pace up and down 
by the water edge, fitly frames " Thoreau's Cove." 
Just far enough removed from the transient visitor 
to Walden Pond, quite difhcult of access through 
the woods, it was yet easy for the hermit poet to 
permit himself a view of his fellows, whom he was 
fond of studying with a grim kind of pleasure. 
No recluse of the friar's frock and sackcloth girdle 
was he ; nor was he sent to solitude by the pangs 
of a nature preying upon itself, and crying out 
that all the world misunderstood him. Cheek by 



Her Higlnuays and Byways. 



97 



jowl with Nature even in her merriest moods, he 
found himself, and never a little bird tripped across 
his path but lingered to tell him her happiest 
secret. All things breathed for him their best life, 
giving just as the sunshine did, warmth and beauty 
to his soul, because he too was a child of the sun. 




THOKEAU'S COVE AT WALDEN PONO. 



By the shores of Walden, Thoreau lived but a 
brief period as men count time — two years and 
two months ; but in the twenty-four hours of each 
day he passed a long uninterrupted life of thought, 
in which God alone was his teacher; he in turn 
becomincr teacher to other men who necessarily 



gS Old Coucoj^d. 

must live in crowded marts, and toil in the heat of 
the day. " Like a voice crying in the wilderness " 
was his stern invective against all the immoralities 
of money-getting, and the deceptions of social life, 
suggesting a brighter day of cleanness of living, 
through the soul's recognizance of its own divinity. 
Thoreau never sent one into the wilderness to find 
this out; he went himself, as thus to go was the 
only thing that fitted his necessities, but he allowed 
each one to discover the royal road to happiness. 
Scornino- to assume a teacher's seat, he was essen- 
tially a Doctor of the Laws of life, and the chair 
in which he was placed by willing scholars, was 
endowed by the Alma Mater of us all — Mother 
Nature herself. 

A curious pile of stones now marks the spot 
where Thoreau's hut was built by himself. It is 
interesting to note that these stones have been 
brought here singly from the edge of the Lake by 
the sympathetic hand of each visitor. Sometime, 
let us hope in the near future when those yet re- 
maining who knew and loved him can voice their 
sympathy with the movement, there is to be a more 
enduring expression than this pile, that shall tell 
the passing stranger something like this: — 




visitors' memorial on tiik site of iTKiKEAr's iirr. 



Her Highicays and Byzvays. loi 

Here was Thoreau ; here he Hvecl apart from 
men those days and nights, developing in the light 
of Nature, and taught of God, when his soul grew 
apace. 

Why did Thoreau turn from the haunts of men, 
to a life in the w^oods ? His own words tell us: 
" I went to the woods because I wished to live 
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, 
and see if I could noi; learn what it had to teach, 
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had 
not lived, ... I wanted to live deep, and suck 
out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and 
vSpartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, 
to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life 
into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, 
and, if it proved to be mean, why, then to get the 
whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its 
meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to 
know it by experience, and be able to give a true 
account of it in my next excursion." 

W^hy did he choose Walden for the scene of his 
voluntary isolation? Hear him: "Why, here is 
Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered 
so manv years ago; where a forest was cut down 
last winter another is springing up by its shore as 



I02 Old Concord. 

lustily as ever; the same thought is welling up to 
its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy 
and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it 
may be to me." 

After a variety of amusing and original expe- 
riences in which he becomes the possessor of 
boards and nails, this man of the wilderness, hew- 
ing the tall and stately pines, consenting that none 
other shall supply the rafters for his dwelling, at 
last has a semi-public raising, and becomes, to use 
his own words, "a squatter" by the Pond. 

" My house was on the side of a hill, immediately 
on the cdoe of the larf-er wood, in the midst of a 
young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half 
a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow 
foot-path led down the hill." 

Every little item of expense attendant upon this 
new venture in housekeeping, is put down most 
carefully, and given ingenuously to the public. To 
meet a part of this outlay, he plants two and a half 
acres of beans, a commodity that his association 
and trainino- tauirlit him could not fail to be 
salable. 

The cabin was furnished with a simplicity that 
matched its exterior. Part of it was Thoreau's 



Her HigJnvays and Byiuays. 103 

own handiwork; the " bed, table, chairs, desk and 
writing utensils " being given as an illustration 
in the description of the " Thoreau corner " in 
the Antiquarian House. " In short," he says, " I 
am convinced, both by faith and experience, that 
to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hard- 
ship but a pastime, if we live simply and wisely." 
He is very careful to add, " I would not have any 
one adopt my mode of living on any account, for 
beside that before he has fairly learned it I may 
have found out another for myself. I desire that 
there may be as many different persons in the 
world as possible ; but I would have each one be 
very careful to find out and pursue his own way." 

To interpret the message of Walden Pond to 
the human heart, one should study her often, dur- 
ing many seasons, and through moods as changeful 
as the shifting lights that play upon her surface. It 
is rarely that one can abide by her as did Thoreau 
— the mcssaw is sent to most of us in another 
way. We, looking down into the mirror of her 
clear innocence, take it thankfully, and go our way 
into the thick of the world again, helped where we 
needed hel[). 



IV. 



For a little time pilgrims may put aside the 
claims of the Concord River; but the days are 
numbered. Go whither one will, threading the 
rose-brier and alder-bordered lane, or traversing 
the broad public thoroughfare; plunging into the 
sequestered spots in search of the remotely his- 
toric, or sitting at the feet of some modern sage or 
brilliant literary light — one is kept in and through 
it all distinctly conscious of the presence of the 
liquid highway, down whose silent surface he m.ay 
glide, and find in the gentle flow of the stream, and 
the shifting beauty of the shore, that repose and 
inspiration that every well-meaning life demands 
for itself. 

An idyllic day in Concord presupposes some 
touch of the River. It is possible in launching 
one's canoe from the little landing-place by the 
Minute Man, to lose the thread of existence that 
connects one with the remainder of humanity, bid- 

104 



Her HigJnuays and Byivays. 107 

ding them a serene good-by as your bark leaves 
the shore, and floats off through the Hly pads to 
revel in solitude. It is by no means a selfish 
enjoyment. You become acquainted with your 
own nature as you are shut in by the bank on 
either side, to the mirror of this shining stream 
that seems to be scanning you with the clear eyes 
of truth, and luring the best possibilities within you, 
to become sturdy realities. 

It is the gentlest of teachers, and leaves the 
pupil unconscious of being led, which is the most 
exquisite of all influences. You only know that 
uncharitableness and kindred sins seem to drop off 
and float away from you down the stream to dis- 
appear in yonder shallow curve ; you are even 
sorry that you were cross to the book agent who 
called at your door in the early morning to be sure 
of finding you at home, and )'0u have a vague idea 
that you were responsible for that flurry with the 
cook that arose on your daily round through her 
department, that day. Before starting on this 
expedition, you were quite sure that she alone of 
all the women created, was the most trying and 
persistently evil creature ; but now, the wild beat- 
ing of your righteous indignation dies down to a 



io8 Old Concord. 

sluggish rhythm, in tune with the river, and you 
are gently sorry that you gave her temptation to 
air her tongue. 

But your remorse, however salutary, must be 
gentle. None of the stiff breezes tliat stir up a 
harrowed conscience to a bitter resume, blow upon 
your soul here. The liquid melody as your canoe 
olides on throuQ"h the water, miuQ-linsf with the 
note of the wood-bird shaping his course by the 
river, suggests hope and peace together with your 
sweet contrition ; and you slowly prepare, while 
lazily manipulating your oars, for meeting life on 
the morrow, in the proper attitude toward all men. 

For the moment you do not even care where 
you are going. The fierce spirit of unrest that 
takes possession of the sight-seer, has no hold 
upon you. In due time, you are confident, you 
will come upon the meeting-place of the rivers, 
into the sacred precincts of the liemlocks, over by 
the Island, and into stately Fairhaven Bay. You 
are content to float on and bide your time, and 
absorb all that is a part of your living present. 

There are wdld, adventurous pilgrims who rush 
up and down this liquid thoroughfare. You meet 
them ; they are distressed at its placidity, and 



Her Highways and Byways. 



1 1 1 



because there is nothing "going on," but them- 
selves The shadow of the hemlocks to them is 
an insipid washed-out darkness, with not a hint 
of a ruin or buried cave to relieve its dullness. 
Nashawtuck tablet on Egg Rock is something 
like what they have come to see, and they 1^,11 up 
beside it, wishing there was more of it. But then- 
restlessness is soon over, like an uneasy dream ; 
and onlv the ripples caused by their departing boat, 
remain 'to tell that they have disturbed Nature in 
one of her most delightful hiding places. 

The Musketaquid, Grass-ground River, or Great 
River whose waters bordered the happy hunting 
o-rounds of the first owners, has its rise, through 
one of its branches, in Southern Hopkmton, and 
the other in a pond and a cedar swamp in West- 
borou-h, and after traversing many towns, for 
some of which it forms the boundary line, it 
empties itself, swelled by the North or Assabeth 
River, into the Merrimack at Lowell. It has a 
sluggish, scarcely perceptible current; at low-watcr 
mark the stream is from four to fifteen feet deep, 
bein<r two hundred feet wide as it enters Concord, 
and "three hundred where it leaves the town. So 
the historian tells us. 



1 1 2 Old Concord. 

Between these figures and topographical facts, 
Hes a world of beauty, history and romance. What 
food for legend-hunters; what rich material wait- 
ing by this gently flowing highway, for the his- 
torically inclined ; what echoes of converse held 
by the immortal Three in the temple not made by 
hands, and arched with the somber hemlocks ! Who 
sails the Concord, finds these waiting for him, if his 
ears are but attuned to catch the sounds. 

Thoreau interpreted the woods and lakes around 
Concord, with her river, to his townsmen and the 
stranger alike; opening up new beauties where 
there were eyes to see . Another, Mr. George Brad- 
ford Bartlett, with the love of one born and bred 
within her borders, the son of the revered physician, 
is fitted, as few are, to follow the Nature-poet as 
interpreter. Equally at home in the forest, on the 
lake, or the river, he is the best of guides, and fur- 
nished by Nature and training, with imperturbable 
kindness and good spirits, he gains appreciation for 
his own qualities of heart and mind, from those who 
are supposed to be only admiring the scenery, and ac- 
cumulating the legends from his never-ceasing store. 

Hawthorne, the best of companions to his friends, 
Emerson and Thoreau, on their excursions on the 



Her Hio/iways and Byways. 



113 



river, made also many silent voyages of cUscovery 
along the Assabeth and Sudbury, when his boat 
drifted idly with the current, or his facile fingers set 




JN IHE ASSABETH. 



themselves to their task of managing the oars, as his 
mood might be. The gentle current, sometimes 
scarcely perceptible to him who in softly-gliding 
canoe traverses this liquid highway, yielded to the 
romancer, weaving his weird creations, an under- 
tone that never interfered with the play of his 
fancy. He was fond of it all, and expressed his 
delight in this winding river, particularly the North 
Branch. 



114 



Old Concord. 



The hemlocks wooed him many times with their 
deep, dark stiUness ; the overhanging trees, flinging 
their tips in the water, while their roots tenaciously 
cling to the high receding bank above, "the Indian 
name of which," says Hawthorne, " 1 have forgotten, 




THE HEMLUCKS. 



though Mr. Thoreau told it to me ; and here in 
some instances the trees stand leaning over the 
river stretching out tlieir arms as if about to plunge 
in headlong." 

We debark, and leave our small canoe fast to 
the sloping shore that runs down from the grounds 




THE TAl'.I.l'/r AT EGG KUCK. 



Her Highicays and Byivays. 1 1 7 

belonging to the Old Manse, to resume the phae- 
ton once more. The weather-beaten house, home 
of the Puritan pastor, and, for a brief space, the 
shelter of the great romancer who lingered within 
its then venerable walls, while he recorded their 
old-time quaintness and wrote them into fame, 
looks as if Time had a]\va3^s claimed it for his 
own, holding the refusal before all other tenants. 

" Between two tall gateposts of unhewn stone," 
so opens the Mosses from an old Manse "(the gate 
itself having long fallen from its hinges at some 
unknown epoch) we beheld the gray front of the 
old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue 
of black ash trees." ..." The wheeltrack 
leading to the door, as well as the whole breadth 
of the avenue, was almost overo-rown with irrass. 
affording dainty mouthfuls to two or three vagrant 
cows and an old white horse who had his own liv- 
ing to pick up along the roadside." 

As the avenue looked then, so now it presents 
the same aspect, forty odd years later. 

The old homestead of dull red color and ram- 
bling outline, with its substantial outbuildings, on 
the other side of the highway, presents to the 
passer-by the view of one of Concord's oldest 



ii8 



Old Concoj'd. 



houses. On the face of the L, is a diamond- 
shaped bit of white marble, to mark the place 
where the British bullet went through on the day 
of the Fight; a piece of the Old North Bridge is 
nailed to a neighboring beam ; under this is kept 























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THE ELISHA JONES HOUSE. 



the stone (one of several used as stepping stones 
when the water was high on the causeway) where 
Isaac Davis, a minute man, fell, mortally wounded. 
An old resident who lived in this house which was 
owned by Elisha Jones at that time, used to relate 
that she stood on a pile of salt fish (part of the 




AVKNUE TO THE OLD MANSE. 



Her Highicays and Byways. i 2 1 

stores wliich wlm-c concealed there) to see the " red 
coats march by." 

The Lowell Railroad track just beyond, brings 
us back to the enterprising present, of steam, and 
electricity. We cross it, and amble on, to turn 
presently at our left into a small lane, that takes 
us out on the Bedford road. Only a few steps on 
this, and we are brought face to face with one of 
the " God's acres " of which this old town is so 
prolific. Turning within the inclosure, we follow 
the winding road that soon leaves the cemetery in 
the distance. The way is bordered on the right 
by groves of thrifty young pines and spruce, with 
their eternal Qrreen suo-crestiniT the freshness of the 
Heavenly fields; the left is open and undulating, 
till we reach the brow of the hill to come suddenly 
upon a rustic summer house overlooking the basin 
or hollow. Here sleep they who have toiled with 
brain and hand among their living fellows, wlio 
will one day follow them. 

Nothing but inspiration can result from a few 
hours' stay in Sleepy Hollow. " Their work is 
done" — the Cjuiet sleepers' — but ours is not. 
Passed on to us is the fearful heritage of woe and 
sin and ignorance in the world ; for us, with voice, 



122 



Old Concord. 



with pen, and witli hand-labor, to do what we may, 
to lessen it, and to help the Christ to be unveiled 
in each heart. 

The Sleepy Hollow seems not alone to point to 
the life beyond, where activities maimed and held 




Hawthorne's grave in sleepy hollow. 



down here, are unchained and symmetrical ; but to 
be full of the life that is of to-day, crowded with 
richest possibilities. 

Who reads their written words, should stand 
beside the silent graves of Hawthorne, Emerson 
and Thoreau. The matchless eloquence of silence 




EMERSON'S GRAVE. 



Her Higlnvays and Byways. 125 

is here, unbroken by sound of a voice. Only the 
winds play through the pines, most fittingly, for 
to each of the immortal Three, the pine liad a 
messao-e in life. 

Thoreau's grave, whose dull red stone has been 
replaced by a handsome granite block, is on the 
Ridge, just across a narrow foot-path separating it 
from that of Hawthorne, and a little below^ Ridge 
Path. The great romancer's resting-place is in- 
closed in a hedge of arbor vita?, and is marked on 
its marble foot and head-stones by the one name 
" Hawthorne." At the side sleeps little Gladys, 
aged two years, Julian Hawthorne's little daughter, 
while the beautiful boy that blessed the heart of 
his mother. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, for four 
brief summers, rests at the feet of that grand- 
parent whom he was to know only in the life 
beyond. 

Following the path to the two tall pines that 
guard the grave of Emerson, whose request it was 
to be laid beside them, we see the beautiful bowlder 
of pink quartz — most suggestive of memorials! 
No modeler's chisel has touched it to prune its 
rough beauty. Just as it came from its native 
quarry, it was ])laced above the heart that remained 



126 



Old Concord. 



throuo-h a lono- life, fresh as from its Maker's hands. 
No words are needed to tell the stranger, " This is 
the grave of Ralph Waldo Emerson." 







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THE TABLET ON KEYES' HILL. 

And just across the narrow driveway is the new- 
made grave of one who, called in the midst of his 
work, found here appropriate resting-place. Just 
as unique in his way — just as striking a figure in 
his individuality, his was the part in life's great 
work to break a path for the tender feet of the little 





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ife 



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SITE OK irARVARD COLLKGE TiaiPORARILV LOCATED AT CONCORD: 



Her Highways arid Byzvays. 129 

ones who clamored for knowledge. The " children's 
friend" brought to them their printed page — their 
own Hterature; he went into new and untried ways 
to do it; he made himself their champion; he 
struo'sled on mid difficulties and obstacles that 
would have defeated one not sent by God to do 
that work. And suddenly he was not, for God 
took him ^ the man with the heart of a little child, 
and the will and the fibre of a hero. 

Midday finds us after a visit to the Tablet on 
Keyes' Hill, lunching in our phaeton, in a shady 
spot on " College Road." Over a winding thorough- 
fare, striking off near the old Barrett House, we 
have come ; not only winding is the road, but with 
constantly narrowing sides, it is growing more and 
more stony and uncomfortable for horse, and car- 
riage occupants, until at last it resolves itself into 
a respectable cart path, where there is small danger 
of meeting a fellow traveler. This is the time we 
seize to become a disciple of William Black ; and 
never did food or a bottle of milk taste better to a 
pilgrim. 

After the lunch is disposed of, we clamber 
through the thicket, wondering how the college 
boys liked it, the turning out in winter, by the 



1 30 Old Concord. 

order of the Provincial Congress, from their espe- 
cial quarters in Cambridge, to give place to the 
soldiers. As the Professors were accommodated 
down in the village, the President being housed at 
good Dr. Minott's, the young fellovv'S in the woods 
probably had as fine a chance for their pranks, 
unseen, as could be desired. Several of the stu- 
dents boarded at an old house at the foot of Lee's 
Hill ; this was burned about twenty-five years 
since. Lee was the notorious Tory, it will be 
remembered, who was for a time a prisoner within 
his own farm limits, as ]3unishment for his treason- 
able sentiments. 

The sun is nearly down, the most becoming 
light we had almost said, in which to view the 
quaint old house to which we now drive up, after 
a leisurely circuit. But we remember that in early 
morning we have wandered by this fascinating bit 
of antiquity, and again at noon, and eacli time 
have found the old Hosmer House with its sur- 
roundings, irresistible in its appeal to our sense of 
picturesqueness. 

Set back from the road, and guarded by its 
rambling stone wall, overarched by a drooping elm 
in the doorvard, the other trees at a slight remove, 



Her Highivays and Byways. 



the old house looks at one with a gentle dignity 
as if it held itself aloof from all other dwelling- 
places that must yield to the inroads of Time. As 
was observed of the Minott House, it is most 




THE OLD WINTHRDP HOUSE. 



favorably placed for an artistic effect ; all its group- 
ings adding to the quaintness of outline, and its 
weather-stained front. Within, is one of the old- 
time gentlewomen who, carrying her ninety years 
lightly, meets one graciously as if on the threshold 
of life; glad to open for a new-comer her store of 
reminiscences of noted people and places in the 



I 34 Old Concoj^d. 

old town. This is the home of friends of Thoreau, 
who grew up witli him, into sympatliy with Nature 
and truth. 

In front, and quite near to the stone wall, stood 
the quaint, old W'inthrop House. Beautiful oak 
panelings modeled from the homesteads in Old 
England, adorned this interior. When the dwel- 
ling was taken down, some thirty years since, a 
sheathing to a beam, being torn off, disclosed an 
account written in chalk, of a sale of lumber, over 
a century and a half ago recorded there, covered 
and left, a silent witness of the past. 

We drive home, crossing the river at the " Red 
Bridge." The western glow drops down upon the 
shining stillness that scarce tells of a current. 
But inevitably, it is running to its end, surely, 
steadily underneath. So do our two lives, co77i- 
pagnons dc voyage, as we are, move down the 
stream of time. Peaceful sightseeing and reminis- 
cence-gathering must soon give place to busy work 
and a new hold on sterner duties. Life bears us 
on with imperceptible current, yet just as relent- 
lessly as does that of the river, to its end. 



V. 



And a day comes at last, when the easy-going 
horse, hitherto of tlie most courteous and obh'g- 
ing demeanor, liatly persists in his refusal to do 
any more " pilgriming." In other words, he can- 
not be found when wanted — and at last traced 
with great difhculty, by one of his two companions 
in the trips recorded in this simple history, he is 
discovered peering from a thick covert in one cor- 
ner of the pasture, his equine mind flatly made up 
to assert his equine will. And he shows such de- 
cided skill in displaying the teeth still left him, 
whenever her hand essays to pat his aged nose, 
that she concludes it would be unkind to insist 
that he be led forth and go on a tour this day. 
Particularly as all her blandishments in the way 
of sugar and cake-bits, and even a juicy apple, still 
create in him only a deep displeasure. So she de- 
sists with a sigh, and says, approaching the window 
where her wiser comrade has had an eye to the 

>35 



136 Old Concord. 



whole proceeding, " I really prefer not to use the 
phaeton to-day ; let us walk." 

Thus it is that Fairyland is entered and 
possessed. 

" How foolish those persons are who have never 
learned the art of walking," observes the pilgrim 
who has just parted from the old horse. " Half 
the pleasure in life consists in this simple exercise; 
there is positive exhilaration in each step." 

" Yes," asserts the other pedestrian, as they 
tramp down Walden Street, past the large, dun-col- 
ored domicile before whose door the two had 
appeared on their first day in Concord. 

" How were we to know it was not a boarding- 
house ! " they had exclaimed to each other, as they 
gained the street, after being told that it was the 
almshouse, by the pleasant-faced woman who heard 
their request to be " taken in and lodged and kept." 
" Was ever anything so delusive } Why I looked 
through the window as I stood on the piazza — I 
couldn't help seeing, you know — and there was an 
old man fondling a little child in his lap, and the 
two were laughing, and it was all as neat and cosy 
and home-y as you please." 

And then down a little farther, on this same 



Her HigJnuays and Byivays. 137 

Walden Street, the two had inquired at another 
house standing "back from the village street," a 
pillared aristocrat among its fellows, for the privi- 
leo-e, for any consideration within reasonable bounds 
that the owner should stipulate, of calling the place 
" home " while they sojourned in Concord. 

" We will make no mistakes this time," said the 
other pilgrim. "You would do better to let me in- 
quire, for I am quite certain here," and she walked 
up the steps and in between the pillars with an 
erectness of spine that precedes victory. 

" This is the home for the aged, ma'm," observed 
the domestic in answer to the question, and peering 
throuo-h the screen door that shut the two out from 
the elysium they sought. 

"What; a charitable place?" cried the pilgrim, 
fixed as a statue and with about as much change- 
fulness of expression. 

"Yes, m'am, for th' old ladies and gentlemen — 
we're ooin' to have a lawn party for 'cm to-morrow, 
won't you come t " 

The two turn, after they are well on the thor- 
ouo-hfare once more, and gaze long and steadfastly 
at the fine old mansion and its well-kept grounds. 
" If w^e were only a little poorer, or a little older. 



I 28 Old Concord. 



a 



we could get in one of these houses maybe, and 
give lawn parties, too," cries one. 

But our pilgrims must stop reminiscing and give 
themselves up to Fairyland. 

With faces set toward Walden Pond, serene in 
its translucent blue, and shimmering in the morning- 
sunlight, the two pedestrians walk as briskly as 
those can who have hitherto trusted to the powers 
of an equine conductor to "get on," — and by the 
time they have passed the junction of the road with 
Thoreau Street, they are quite willing to espy the 
little opening" in the woods to the left, that will ad- 
mit them to Fairyland and her treasures. At this 
point the chronicle of these Concord explorations 
must record the first falling out these comrades have 
sustained. The waving line of dense foliage has 
many little breaks that necessitate a choice between 
them, by one who is seeking a path. It is with 
faces flushed and a manner far from serene, there- 
fore, that the pilgrims at last stand drawn deep 
within the cool, sylvan dell that divides them from 
the outer world and its quarrels. 

" We have been like two naughty children," ob, 
served Pilgrim No. i, coming to her senses with a 
gasp — "that is, I have been." 



Her Highways and Byways. 141 

" Your repentance is better than your grammar," 
remarks the other, taking refuge in a pert reply, 
to hide the shakiness of her voice. 

" ' Let's make up,' as the children say." 

" Wait till we get to Lover's Path," says tlit 
other with a short laugh. So the two strike into a 
winding road ; one on side the bank withdrawn, 
high and green, a wealth of lusty foliage waves soft 
yet insistent messages of goodwill and peace ; on 
the other is the deep ravine, hinting in its mysteri- 
ous depths of heavy brake, and darkening shrub, of 
hidian lurking-places and aboriginal security. 

" I verily believe," says Pilgrim No. i, dropping 
into an " hidian-iile " pace, behind her companion, 
as they slowly thread their way along, " that this is 
the original camping ground of the first owners of 
Concord — the Musketaquidians." 

"You forget," contributes the other, "all history 
locates them in quite another part of the town." 

" One ought sometimes to rise superior to his- 
tory," cries No. i impatiently; " those Indians must 
have lived here. Th.ink what a glorious place for 
the Squaw-Sachem to hold her court, and " — 

"Oh! Fd much rather believe the truth — that 
Nashawtuck was their home," cries the other. 



142 Old Concord. 

" Besides, the Indian Queen never lived in Concord 
at all." 

Her companion wisely takes time to gaze long 
at slope and dell, before she answers : " I think we 
would better get to Lover's Path and make up our 
little difference," she remarks slowlv. 

" Before we begin another," finishes Pilgrim 
No. 2, grimly. And on they walk in silence. And 
presently in an idyllic curve of Lover's Path they 
sit down, adjust their differences, and then take up 
once more the Lidian question. 

" Here is my theory," begins No. i, switching 
the nodding ferns with the tip of her parasol, 
thereb}' rousing indignant colonies of ants, and 
black beetles, with an occasional gray lizard to lend 
dignity to the scene ; " that when the renowned 
Nanapashenit died, the government being in a 
woman's hand, the Squaw-Sachem was wise enough 
to move to Concord, and that she located as near 
Walden Pond as it was possible to get. Pm sure I 
should, had I been in her place ; and that she made 
the seat of her power here in this very spot ; here 
she married Webbacowet, the pow-wow, wizard, 
priest, sorcerer, chirurgeon, and what-not, of the 
tribe." 



Her HigJiways and Byivays. 



143 



" But all that happened elsewhere," breaks in 
the other pilgrim, with fire in her eye, to defend her 

point. 

" Tahattawan, the Sub-chief, may have lived on 
Nashawtuek," continues the self-appointed histo- 
rian ionorino- all insinuations and waxing warmer, 





THE SYLVAN SHURE. 



" that Tm willing to allow, but don't walk over my 
pet theory, I beg." 

*' Perhaps you can see Captain Moseley's wig 
hanging on that tree," suggests her friend with an 
ironical tinge to the "color of her tone" — and 
pointing to a twisted specimen of oak just across 
the path. " You remember that story } " 

" No ; never heard it." 



144 Old Concord. 

" I'm so glad, because now it gives me a chance 
to talk," leaning forward in a conversational atti- 
tude : " Why, you see there was a certain Captain 
Moseley, a soldier, but a terror on the sea as well, 
for he had been a West Indian Buccaneer. Well, 
he indulged in a bit of New England finery in those 
days, a wig. Probably his locks underneath were 
flowing and plentiful, in the pirate style, but for 
dress-up occasions his caput was not complete 
without an extra arrangement of hair. When he 
was soldiering, and before an engagement, he would 
carefully hang his wig on a bush or branch of a tree. 
So of course the Indians thought he had two heads. 
It was bad enough to fifrht the Evil One with a 
single head; when it came to having two, it was 
quite time for the tomahawk to be buried, and the 
spear and arrow to follow." 

" Nonsense ! As if an Indian would care whether 
two or twenty heads sat on a pair of shoulders ! 
In fact the richness of scalp material would please 
him best. However, let that pass. What was Cap- 
tain Moseley doing in Concord, pray tell ? Imagine 
a dashing buccaneer in this quiet spot ! " 

" Oh ! he brought twelve pirates ; they had been 
ofiven their freedom to fiirht the Indians." 



Her Highways and Byways. 145 

" All the clogs of war let loose on the poor red 
man — the old story," murmurs the other. "But 
this was after King Philip's war, when the Indians 
came back to Concord from Nashoba w^hich is now 
part of Littleton. Aren't you getting the dates 
a little mixed } " 

" I don't care about dates ; one must rise supe- 
rior to dates," retorts the first pilgrim recklessly. 
" I'm only indulging in harmless tradition ; do let 
me ! the spot provokes it." 

" Very well ; what next } " 

" Well, these Indians were hurried away to the 
rough and stormy shores of Deer Island, where even 
they dwindled to a mere remnant of a tribe until 
finally but one warrior lived " to tell the tale." 

" If Deer Island had been wanted for the enter- 
prise of the white agriculturist, I suppose the Indian 
would have moved off accommodatingly into the 
sea. 

" I presume so. But let us go back to the In- 
dian Queen. 'I just love her,' as the children say ; 
for real charity, and that old-fashioned virtue one 
seldom hears of nowadays, gratitude, give me one 
who can say as she said to Jotham Gibbons " — 

" And who, pray, is Jotham Gibbons } " 



I ^.6 Old Concord. 

" Oh ! he was the son of Captain Edward Gib- 
bons of Boston — never mind ; the father had been 
kind to her, and the Squaw-Sachem didn't forget 
it. So she gave the choice piece of land, some- 
where near the Mystic ponds, she had saved for her- 
self, to this same Jotham Gibbons; and this comes 
down through the years as the message that went 
with the gift — from an " untutored savage" mind 
you — "for the many kindnesses received from his 
father, and for the tender love and respect which 
she bore to the son, and desired that these be re- 
corded in perpetual remembrance of this thing." 

"And so you see," continues No. i, "this is one 
reason why I want to locate the Indian Queen in 
this charming spot. Think of Sylvan Lake, where 
she could view her dusky face, and braid her elfin 
locks, as by a mirror; over which her light canoe 
could dance, and " — 

" I see I must get you away," says No. 2, strug- 
o-lino- to her feet," before, like Silas Wegg, you 
" drop into poetry." 

" Let us go around the pond," cries the other, 
" rU promise not to say " Lidian " again, only the 
driest of facts concerning the origin of Fairyland." 

" I know that already," her companion, far 




\— -'-— ii: 







Her Highzuays and Byzuays. 149 

ahead now in the path, gives back over her shoul- 
der. " Ebby Hubbard owned it, and it was after- 
ward sold to a public-spirited citizen who spent 
much time and thought and money on it. It was a 
laroe tract of rough unpromising land ; your beau- 
tiful pond had to be evolved by the generous hand 
that has thrown this all open to whomever cared to 
enter in. All honor to this public-spirited citizen, 
I say, who laid a debt at each man's door, for this 
same old-fashioned virtue of gratitude to repay." 

0, Sylvan Lake! with thy veil of delicate tree- 
twigs drawn before thy face, like the tracery of a 
fairy dream that only half reveals the mystic beauty 
of a longed-for Paradise — sweet be thy bordeis, 
shut in by interlacing boughs of Nature's most 
prodigal forest growth ; so far removed from haunts 
of man, that only the echoes of the wilderness con- 
fuse thee, yet so close to the shining rail along 
which run the feet of traflfic, and by which are con- 
ducted the daily going and coming of the human 
family, that the shy bird takes quick warning at the 
rumble of the train, and lifting her pretty head de- 
serts thy limpid banks, and, her thirst unquenched, 
on frightened wing she hurries to a place of safety 
and repose. 



i;o 



Old Concord. 



So profound tlie stillness is with thee ! Never 
broken save by hum of bee, the twitter of bird, or 
chatter of squirrel ; only the sky to smile into th}' 
bosom, and disturb thy quiet, by the dancing light 
of a sunl^eam. The winds that break and twist 
the writhing forms of the oak and maple, the alder 
and the pine, do not come near thee to ruffle thy 
fair surface. It is as if the gentlest of hands had 
soothingly passed over thy shining face, that was 
thenceforth to image only the reflection of the 
Divine content, expressed at the birth-throe of 
creation — " and God saw that it was good." 

And on the morrow the easy-going horse, being 
clothed in his right mind once more, comes humbly 
up to the door while the pilgrims are eating their 
morning repast, pokes his nose within, as one who 
would say, " Here I am ; take me," his eye shining- 
clear with Duty's light. 

And so, easily forgiven, he is trusted once more 
v;ith the environment of harness and shafts, and he 
turns his head to gaze triumphantly at the familiar 
old dashboard and the vehicle with its gentle slope 
that accommodates a tired-out spring; and he for- 
gets his sin of the day before, and is content as 
a child with himself and all the world. 





^?fe--: 




Her Higlnvays and Byways. i - -> 

And thus the pilgrims drive out to Lee's Hill, 
so rich in tradition and incident as to require a 
volume for itself. But our pilgrims are not after 
statistics and historical information ; this is already 
well given in various places. What they desire is 
to revel in all the feast of tradition and story ; to 
carrv awav some of the local colorino- and to o-et 
a word picture or two of some of the episodes 
connected with life at the Hill in the olden days. 

" Of course the place is named for ' Tory Lee ' ? " 
suggests the one who manipulates the reins. 

" I don't know, but I presume so ; he seems to 
have been a man who made his mark here in Con- 
cord. Whatever is to be said of him, Joseph Lee 
did not ' let the grass grow under his feet.' " 

" And yet he found time to keep up a lively church 
quarrel. To him, I presume, is due the origin of the 
Black Horse Church, that was held, 'so they say,' 
in the big room of a tavern wdiich had for a sign a 
black horse ; the tavern was near the spot where 
the library now stands." 

" I don't see why the Concordians were so easy 
with him for giving secret information to the 
British ; his head ought to have come off for a 
spy," exclaims the other pilgrim indignantly. 



1^4 ^^'■^ Concord. 

" Well, it was pretty bad for him to be made a 
prisoner on his own farm for fourteen months," 
answered her companion. " That must have been 
dreadful ! " 

" Particularly when the Harvard students were 
turned loose on him. Twelve were portioned out 
to Tory Lee's farm, you remember, when the col- 
lege was moved to Concord ; just think of it ! " 

" Poor Tory Lee ! it is safe to say that life wasn't 
easy for him then. Well, why wasn't the hill 
named Willard Hill, I wonder, for good Simon 
Willard, that benefactor of the young community, 
without whom nothing seems to have been done ; 
or Gray Hill, after ' Billy Gray of Salem,' who at 
one time owned the farm ? Now Billy was a man 
to proudly perpetuate any association vnth ; and 
besides, when we reflect that it was his golden aid 
that made it possible for ' the good ship Constilii- 
tioji ' to give the world some valuable ideas con- 
cerning our young independence, it would have 
been very natural for his name to be honored in 
this way. But Tory Lee!" 

" By the way, were not some of the timbers of 
the Constitution cut from trees on this same Lee's 
Hill .? " 



Her Highivays and Byways. 



00 



" Possibly; but tlien it's glory enough that ' Billy 
Gray ' floated lier on the waters when she took the 
Gucrrierc ; never mind how she was built." 

" But the credit of that belongs to Concord too, 
and people ought to know it," insisted the other 
pilgrini obstinately. 

Her companion turned and regarded her. " Con- 
cord has been first in everything, it seems to 
me, since the world began ; it appears to be too 
late to dispute now her right to universal suprem- 
acy. Oh ! most fortunate they who are born 
Concordians." 



VI. 



Even the " oldest inhabitant," from whom one 
can usually wrest some information to suit his 
fancy or that can be " restored " till it becomes his- 
tory, fails one when appealed to for the origin of 
the name of " The Nine Acre Corner." Then the 
"oldest inhabitant" (otherwise the very essence of 
kindness and brotherly love) turns his head away 
and says, " I don't know." And no entreaties that 
he shall go down into its hitherto forgotten past, 
for a scrap of ancient lore concerning it — just a 
scrap that would make the fortune of the humble 
scribe — can move him to anything other than "I 
don't know," as final as the executioner's knife. 

There is a belief current in some quarters, that 
the grant of nine acres granted to Peter Bulkeley, 
somewhere in that vicinity, may be responsible for 
the title. But the " oldest inhabitant," when ap- 
pealed to on this point, only shakes his head again 
and steadfastly murmurs, " I don't know." 

156 








iP 

P3 






1 




< -«««. 


,1 


I 






Her Highways and Byways. 159 

Mystery enhances the charm the locality holds 
over the one who would see Concord from a pha- 
eton. And so one brio-ht mornino:, when not too 
bright, after a recent rain (that the sand awaiting 
them in the ancient thorouohfare known as the 
" Old Marlborough Road " may not be too powdery), 
our pilgrims make an early start; for they have 
grimly announced their determination not to come 
home alive without adding to the delightful drive 
to " Nine Acre Corner," a conscientious inspection 
of the " Old Marlborough Road." 

" Heaven help you both ! " exclaims the friend 
who hears, and immediately she looks over her little 
store of household remedies for the soothing herb, 
that brewed, will waft them on their return, into a 
sweet forgetfulness of the misery into which they 
are being lured. And she blames herself for 
countenancing Thoreau's seductive invitation. 

But they tuck the book in under a flap of the 
old phaeton cushion, and are content with all the 
world. 

O, " Nine Acre Corner " people ! our pilgrims 
wonder if you know how happy you ought to be, 
drawn back into such a sweet seclusion, where your 
ancient records even have evaded curiosity. " The 



i6o Old Concord. 

Happy Valley " pales before the glow of your re- 
treat, with its soft outline of rich, undulating 
meadow, the comfortable, refined homestead, its 
barn bursting with the generosity of its crops, its 
Sabbath stillness, as if all Nature were hushed to a 
quiet thanksgiving too deep for words. The very 
insect, elsewhere booming his joy in noisy fashion 
as he riots in the field, hushes his turbulence to a 
gentle refrain, or a dignified, resonant hum, as one 
who ever carries within his bosom an abiding- 
respect for his environment. And the bird twitters 
mildly, or sings its roundelay in clear, high strain 
that soars to the blue above, forgetting any discord- 
ant note that mioht drao- him to earth. Shall the 
hours spent within thy borders, O, " Nine Acre 
Corner," ever be forgotten by our two pilgrims, 
who are true Concordians, at least in loving thee ! 

Drawn back under its generous shadows of elm 
and maple, the gently undulating range of hills 
beyond the sweep of farm and meadow, the " Mar- 
tial Miles house " stands in serene content on the 
wane of this century, as if quite determined so to 
stand on the ebb of another. Once within, and our 
explorers thrill with delight. Here are the ideal 
old rooms with limitless numbers of cupboards, 









\ 



\ 



\ 








* % 







. '^ 






Her HigJnuays and Byivays. 



163 



cubby-holes and dressers; with kitchen and shed 
and "annex" without stint. Here are the bewitch- 
ing stairs, "so easy to fall down," as one old resi- 
dent wisely remarks, " 'cause you can fetch up on 
the landin's an' get a chance to catch hold of 
somethin'," a provision it may be that our fore- 




"THE VERY ROOM WHERE HE STARTED HIS I'ERPETUAL M(JTION ! " 

fathers kept in mind when looking out for the 
weary foremothers who would use those stairs in 
their unceasing round from " pillar to post." And 
here is the old garret, full of bewitching suggestions 
of a musty past, from which one pilgrim draws out 
an ancient leather-and-nail-bound trunk, crossing 



164 Old Concord. 

the palm of the owner with good American silver 
for the pleasure of calling it her own ; which so 
enhances her delight, that she picks her way down 
the dark, twisted stairs, in a dazed condition, to stand 
in front of the door of the little room under the 
garret, there to listen to the tale that sets forth the 
old man, the father of Martial, who therein wrought 
at his machine that was never to know rest. 

" Oh ! if we had missed that," she cries, as out 
they pass through the ancient front door of the 
house, like all its cotemporaries seldom opened ex- 
cept for wedding or funeral, and casting a lingering 
o-lance at the old house. " To think we have stood 
in the very room where he started his perpetual 
motion ! " 

" And where it stopped. Can we ever be thankful 
enough ! " breathes the other. 

" Nut many there be 

Who enter therein 
Only the friends of the 

Irishman Quin," 

murmurs Pilo-rim No. i, drawino- rein before the 
remnant of house left by that individual. " Think 
what we have to tell when at last we must turn our 
backs on Concord and go once more into the world." 



Her Highly' ays and By 20 ays. 167 

No. 2 pierces the very grass blades with her rapt 
f^aze. " And the other worthies," she says wnth a 
sigh, when there is no more to conquer, and draw- 
ing out her well-thumbed Thoreau, " can't we see 
them all ? " 

" No," says Pilgrim No. 2, " we can't ; they're dead." 

" Oh ! — I mean the houses, or the places where 
the houses were. We shall be forever disgraced 
if we lose one." 

Elisha Dugan — 

" Oh ! man of wild habits 
Tartridges and rabbits, 
Who hast no cares, 
Only to set snares, 
WHio liv'st all alone, 
Close to the bone. 
And where life is sweetest 
Constantly eatest " — 

" And so he lived here close to the bone." 
Our phaeton pauses before " Jenny Dugan 
Brook," tumbling under a little bridge arched with 
stone and protected by the road. 

" Just a stone's throw away," remarks her com- 
panion, consulting the memorandum in her hand, 
given by the "oldest inhabitant." "Never mind, 
w^e shall have to imagine the house. Elisha's father 
lived in it, so of course it's gone years ago." 



1 68 Old Concord. 

" O, yes! well, why is this the Jenny Dugan 
Brook ? " 

" Why, it's named for his mother," replies the 
other pilgrim, trying not to appear too elated be- 
cause she knows, " and so of course it is the Jenny 
Dugan Brook." 

" A most generous thing! " warmly responds the 
first pilgrim, stepping briskly down to the brook- 
edge, followed by the other; the old horse, who 
fully approves of this method of viewing relics and 
byways, shambling of¥ for a wayside nibble. " And 
just like Concord to be the first to bestow fame on 
a woman. What other town would have done \\} 
It is well that woman's day has come. But Concord 
didn't wait for that, she " — 

" ' Took time by the forelock,' as we had better 
do if we wish to get farther on the ' Old Marl- 
borough Road,'" interrupts Pilgrim No. i with 
more speed than grace. 

" And here I believe the farmers at ' Nine Acre 
Corner' used to bring down their logs to the 
saw-mill?" remarks Pilgrim No. 2, interrogatively 
scanning one of the roads that unite at this 
point. " And the other is the back road to town, 
isn tit.'' 




JENNY DUGAN BROOK. 



Her Highways and Byways. \ 7 1 

" Correct," says her companion. " Accordincr to 
the 'oldest inhabitant.' " 

" And Jenny ? Oh ! can't you make up some- 
thing about her? Do," cries No. i impulsively. 
" She must have had a history." 

" We know," answers her companion reflectively, 
" that her husband rejoiced in the name of Tom, 
that he was the first one in the neighborhood who 
cradled grain, that " — 

" But that's not Jenny. Tell me something 
about her," breaks in the other impatiently. 

" Well, the brook rises a mile to the southward, 
and the name of this meadow throuo-h which it 
runs is Nut Meadow " — 

" But that's not Jenny. I want something about 
her," reiterates Pilgrim No. i sharply. " Did not 
Ellen's Isle speak of the woman for whom it was 
named, and shall not black Jenny have fame 1 " 

" I presume she used to whip Elisha and the 
other pickaninnies who played before the cabin 
door," replied her companion considering. " She 
was an excellent washerwoman, tradition says, and 
a silent worker." 

" O, no ! she was a woman — it can't be ! From 
her gift of silence I presume her to be part Indian. 



172 Old Concord. 

Now I'll confess ; my dearest dream about this 
lovely brook is to make Jenny Dugan an Indian 
woman ; then I'll easily trace her descent to the 
Indian Oueen. What more reasonable ? " Pilo-rim 
No. I throws her hitherto well-preserved composure 
recklessly to the winds, and clasps her hands in a 
rhapsody. " Here is the hill where her people 
lived," waving her head toward the slope that ran 
away from their feet. " Arrow-heads and chips 
from their spear-points are to be had for the trouble 
of picking up." 

" Let us stop and get some now, then," interrupts 
her companion. 

"No, no; time is precious; think of the 'Old 
Marlborough Road!' Yes, I'm quite sure that 
Jenny was an Indian ; I can never be satisfied 
unless I make her so. Now I come to think 
of it, she was given the power to rule, by her 
mother, the Indian Queen's daughter, wasn't she } 
So in Jenny were vested all the rights of the 
sovereign of her tribe, only she preferred to 
marry this colored man, this slave — yes, let us 
make Tom a slave, it's so much more picturesque 
to mate him with Jenny; the last survivor of a 
dead system with " — 



Her Highways and Byways. 



/D 



" The remnant of a lost tribe," finished Pilgrim 
No. 2. " Well, now, I suppose if you have finished 
Jenny to your satisfaction, we will attack the 'Old 
Marlborough Road.'" One more glance at the 
dancing brook, tumbling over its hidden mound of 
stones to the wealth of delicate ferns below holding 
out tremulous arms to receive it, and banded across 
by many a log and fence-rail that have slipped from 
their controlling support. One more long look 
over the hill and Thoreau's plain, reclaimed from 
the sandy waste of which he sang, to a semi-fertile 
show of grass and shrubs, and our pilgrims are off 
for the "Old Marlborough Road." 

If the Virginia Road, before mentioned in this 
simple record, makes its lazy pilgrim forget all his 
cares and troubles, the " Old Marlborough " Road is 
well calculated to cause him to take them up again. 
Hiere is not a grain missing of the "gravel " that 
Thoreau knew, with even a goodly addition, to 
plough through. One looks, if he be of a philan- 
thropic turn of mind, pityingly at the horse ; surelv 
he ought not, by all the laws that govern man's 
dealings with the lower brutes, to be compelled to 
draw a heavy phaeton and two able-bodied women 
over this thoroughfare whicli " nobody repairs," 



1/6 



Old Concord. 



decide our pilgrims. So out they step, gently thril- 
ling with a sweet satisfaction in their own benev- 
olence; and hoping their steed has the proper 
amount of gratitude, they persuasively lead him by 
the flowing reins while, gingerly elevating, their 
skirts, they begin to plough their way along. Truth 
compels us to state, however, because this record 




"old MARLBOROUGH ROAD 



prevaricateth not by so much as a hair's breadth 
from the white line of verity, that after a quarter of 
a mile of traveling in this fashion has been enjoyed, 
the pilgrims pause, look to each other for a decision, 
which neither expressing, they step quickly into 
their phaeton and with an abrupt " Go on, Dobbin ! " 
they acknowledge to him, and to all the world that 



Her Highways and Byways. 177 

is there to hear, their willingness to be drawn over 
the remainder of the " Old Marlborough Road." 

"It is not too late to turn back." Pilgrim No. i 
peers furtively into her companion's face, but the 
sight wilts her, and she drops into her corner of 
the phaeton. 

" I'd die before I'd turn back ! " mutters she-of- 
the-whip between her teeth. 

And in weary silence the two occupants of the 
phaeton mechanically watch the horse settle his feet 
with a thud into the sand-bed and pick them out, 
his head observing that peculiar series of jerks 
known to those who manipulate the reins, when 
the propelling power between the shafts is obliged 
to " o'et on " ao-ainst his will. 

" We are positively cruel," murmurs one pilgrim 
leaning forward at a disadvantage and holding her 
breath, under the impression that she is thus reduc- 
ing her weight, " to make this poor creature pull us 
over this diabolical sand " — 

" We can't help it," sighs the other in re- 
sponse, though feeling like a murderer, "and it is 
Thoreau who was cruel ; for after his poem, w^ho 
could look a Concordian in the face and not see 
the " Old Marlborough Road." Go on, Dobbin." 



I 78 Old Concord. 

She even essayed to reach the whip, but the stern 
eye of her confederate forbade. 

" No, we will draw the line at the whip," said 
the latter in cold displeasure, projecting herself 
several additional inches toward the dashboard, at 
the risk of again meeting, in personal contact the 
" Old Marlborough Road." 

And so, conversation dying down, the two lapse 
into miserable reflections, while the twittering of 
the birds in the wayside thickets tell off the slowly 
passing moments, until — our pilgrims draw a con- 
scientious breath, nearly ready to leave this world, 
since they have seen, not Rome, but the " Old 
Marlborough Road;' 

But Pilorrim No. i must vent her inward unrest. 
'• To think we have done all this, to go — nowhere, 
as Thoreau says." 

" You forget. He also says ' you may go round 
the world by the Old Marlborough Road,' " says 
she-of-the-vvhip, waking up. 



